diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/esltt10.txt | 6547 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/esltt10.zip | bin | 0 -> 142299 bytes |
2 files changed, 6547 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/esltt10.txt b/old/esltt10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3ef8d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/esltt10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6547 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang +#11 in our series by Andrew Lang + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Essays in Little + +by Andrew Lang + +January, 1999 [Etext #1594] + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Essays in Little by Andrew Lang +******This file should be named esltt10.txt or esltt10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, esltt11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, esltt10a.txt + + +This etext was prepared from the 1891 Henry and Co. edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do NOT keep these books +in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, for time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text +files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1998 for a total of 1500+ +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach over 150 billion Etexts given away. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001 +should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it +will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001. + + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +We would prefer to send you this information by email +(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail). + +****** +If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please +FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: +[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type] + +ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd etext/etext90 through /etext96 +or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information] +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET INDEX?00.GUT +for a list of books +and +GET NEW GUT for general information +and +MGET GUT* for newsletters. + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1891 Henry and Co. edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Essays in Little + +by Andrew Lang + + + + +Contents: + +Preface +Alexandre Dumas +Mr. Stevenson's works +Thomas Haynes Bayly +Theodore de Banville +Homer and the Study of Greek +The Last Fashionable Novel +Thackeray +Dickens +Adventures of Buccaneers +The Sagas +Charles Kingsley +Charles Lever: His books, adventures and misfortunes +The poems of Sir Walter Scott +John Bunyan +To a Young Journalist +Mr. Kipling's stories + + + + +PREFACE + + +Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this +volume. They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the "Letter to a +Young Journalist," the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and +"The Last Fashionable Novel." The article on the author of "Oh, no! +we never mention Her," appeared in the New York Sun, and was +suggested by Mr. Dana, the editor of that journal. The papers on +Thackeray and Dickens were published in Good Words, that on Dumas +appeared in Scribner's Magazine, that on M. Theodore de Banville in +The New Quarterly Review. The other essays were originally written +for a newspaper "Syndicate." They have been re-cast, augmented, +and, to a great extent, re-written. + +A. L. + + + + +ALEXANDRE DUMAS + + + +Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his +devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough +wherein to tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and +Shalum, in Addison--the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for +half a century and a courtship for two hundred years, might have +sufficed for an exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to +offer, in the brief seasons of our perishable days. I own that I +have not read, and do not, in the circumstances, expect to read, all +of Dumas, nor even the greater part of his thousand volumes. We +only dip a cup in that sparkling spring, and drink, and go on,--we +cannot hope to exhaust the fountain, nor to carry away with us the +well itself. It is but a word of gratitude and delight that we can +say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an ave of friendship +that we can call across the bourne to the shade of the Porthos of +fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even still more +widely circulated than they are; that the young should read them, +and learn frankness, kindness, generosity--should esteem the tender +heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them +again, and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of +dreams, that is what we desire. + +Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he +tried several times to read forbidden books--books that are sold +sous le manteau. But he never got farther than the tenth page, in +the + + +"scrofulous French novel +On gray paper with blunt type;" + + +he never made his way so far as + + +"the woful sixteenth print." + + +"I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and thus, out of +my six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four which the most +scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Much later, in +1864, when the Censure threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the +Emperor: "Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one which a +girl in our most modest quarter, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, may not +be allowed to read." The mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in +general, may not take Dumas exactly at his word. There is a +passage, for example, in the story of Miladi ("Les Trois +Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well think +undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original +passage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has passed through a +medium, as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good +taste. His enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, +owes absolutely nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he +breathes is a healthy air, is the open air; and that by his own +choice, for he had every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, +and every opportunity. + +Two anecdotes are told of Dumas' books, one by M. Edmond About, the +other by his own son, which show, in brief space, why this novelist +is so beloved, and why he deserves our affection and esteem. M. +Villaud, a railway engineer who had lived much in Italy, Russia, and +Spain, was the person whose enthusiasm finally secured a statue for +Dumas. He felt so much gratitude to the unknown friend of lonely +nights in long exiles, that he could not be happy till his gratitude +found a permanent expression. On returning to France he went to +consult M. Victor Borie, who told him this tale about George Sand. +M. Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just before her death, +and found Dumas' novel, "Les Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about +the Valois kings) lying on her table. He expressed his wonder that +she was reading it for the first time. + +"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have +read 'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious, +melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or +physical troubles like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that +M. Sarcey was in the same class at school with a little Spanish boy. +The child was homesick; he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was +almost in a decline. + +"You want to see your mother?" said young Sarcey. + +"No: she is dead." + +"Your father, then?" + +" No: he used to beat me." + +"Your brothers and sisters?" + +"I have none." + +"Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain?" + +"To finish a book I began in the holidays." + +"And what was its name?" + +"'Los Tres Mosqueteros'!" + +He was homesick for "The Three Musketeers," and they cured him +easily. + +That is what Dumas does. He gives courage and life to old age, he +charms away the half-conscious nostalgie, the Heimweh, of childhood. +We are all homesick, in the dark days and black towns, for the land +of blue skies and brave adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, +on the battle-field, in the prison, on the desert isle. And then +Dumas comes, and, like Argive Helen, in Homer, he casts a drug into +the wine, the drug nepenthe, "that puts all evil out of mind." Does +any one suppose that when George Sand was old and tired, and near +her death, she would have found this anodyne, and this stimulant, in +the novels of M. Tolstoi, M. Dostoiefsky, M. Zola, or any of the +"scientific" observers whom we are actually requested to hail as the +masters of a new art, the art of the future? Would they make her +laugh, as Chicot does? make her forget, as Porthos, Athos, and +Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar time, as the +enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these new +authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, precieux, pitiful, +charitable, veracious; but give us high spirits now and then, a +light heart, a sharp sword, a fair wench, a good horse, or even that +old Gascon rouncy of D'Artagnan's. Like the good Lord James +Douglas, we had liefer hear the lark sing over moor and down, with +Chicot, than listen to the starved-mouse squeak in the bouge of +Therese Raquin, with M. Zola. Not that there is not a place and an +hour for him, and others like him; but they are not, if you please, +to have the whole world to themselves, and all the time, and all the +praise; they are not to turn the world into a dissecting-room, time +into tedium, and the laurels of Scott and Dumas into crowns of +nettles. + +There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not +produced the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that +labour. One of the worst books that ever was written, if it can be +said to be written, is, I think, the English attempt at a biography +of Dumas. Style, grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author +does not so much write a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit +of his work is grudging, sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully +peddling. The great charge is that Dumas was a humbug, that he was +not the author of his own books, that his books were written by +"collaborators"--above all, by M. Maquet. There is no doubt that +Dumas had a regular system of collaboration, which he never +concealed. But whereas Dumas could turn out books that live, +whoever his assistants were, could any of his assistants write books +that live, without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister in +good practice a thief and an impostor because he has juniors to +"devil" for him, as make charges of this kind against Dumas. He +once asked his son to help him; the younger Alexandre declined. "It +is worth a thousand a year, and you have only to make objections," +the sire urged; but the son was not to be tempted. Some excellent +novelists of to-day would be much better if they employed a friend +to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator did much more. +Dumas' method, apparently, was first to talk the subject over with +his aide-de-camp. This is an excellent practice, as ideas are +knocked out, like sparks (an elderly illustration!), by the contact +of minds. Then the young man probably made researches, put a rough +sketch on paper, and supplied Dumas, as it were, with his "brief." +Then Dumas took the "brief" and wrote the novel. He gave it life, +he gave it the spark (l'etincelle); and the story lived and moved. + +It is true that he "took his own where he found it," like Molere and +that he took a good deal. In the gallery of an old country-house, +on a wet day, I came once on the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan, where +they had lain since the family bought them in Queen Anne's time. +There were our old friends the Musketeers, and there were many of +their adventures, told at great length and breadth. But how much +more vivacious they are in Dumas! M. About repeats a story of +Dumas and his ways of work. He met the great man at Marseilles, +where, indeed, Alexandre chanced to be "on with the new love" before +being completely "off with the old." Dumas picked up M. About, +literally lifted him in his embrace, and carried him off to see a +play which he had written in three days. The play was a success; +the supper was prolonged till three in the morning; M. About was +almost asleep as he walked home, but Dumas was as fresh as if he had +just got out of bed. "Go to sleep, old man," he said: "I, who am +only fifty-five, have three feuilletons to write, which must be +posted to-morrow. If I have time I shall knock up a little piece +for Montigny--the idea is running in my head." So next morning M. +About saw the three feuilletons made up for the post, and another +packet addressed to M. Montigny: it was the play L'Invitation e la +Valse, a chef-d'oeuvre! Well, the material had been prepared for +Dumas. M. About saw one of his novels at Marseilles in the +chrysalis. It was a stout copy-book full of paper, composed by a +practised hand, on the master's design. Dumas copied out each +little leaf on a big leaf of paper, en y semant l'esprit e pleines +mains. This was his method. As a rule, in collaboration, one man +does the work while the other looks on. Is it likely that Dumas +looked on? That was not the manner of Dumas. "Mirecourt and +others," M. About says, "have wept crocodile tears for the +collaborators, the victims of his glory and his talent. But it is +difficult to lament over the survivors (1884). The master neither +took their money--for they are rich, nor their fame--for they are +celebrated, nor their merit--for they had and still have plenty. +And they never bewailed their fate: the reverse! The proudest +congratulate themselves on having been at so good a school; and M. +Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real reverence and +affection of his great friend." And M. About writes "as one who had +taken the master red-handed, and in the act of collaboration." +Dumas has a curious note on collaboration in his "Souvenirs +Dramatiques." Of the two men at work together, "one is always the +dupe, and HE is the man of talent." + +There is no biography of Dumas, but the small change of a biography +exists in abundance. There are the many volumes of his "Memoires," +there are all the tomes he wrote on his travels and adventures in +Africa, Spain, Italy, Russia; the book he wrote on his beasts; the +romance of Ange Pitou, partly autobiographical; and there are plenty +of little studies by people who knew him. As to his "Memoires," as +to all he wrote about himself, of course his imagination entered +into the narrative. Like Scott, when he had a good story he liked +to dress it up with a cocked hat and a sword. Did he perform all +those astonishing and innumerable feats of strength, skill, courage, +address, in revolutions, in voyages, in love, in war, in cookery? +The narrative need not be taken "at the foot of the letter"; great +as was his force and his courage, his fancy was greater still. +There is no room for a biography of him here. His descent was noble +on one side, with or without the bend sinister, which he said he +would never have disclaimed, had it been his, but which he did not +happen to inherit. On the other side he MAY have descended from +kings; but, as in the case of "The Fair Cuban," he must have added, +"African, unfortunately." Did his father perform these mythical +feats of strength? did he lift up a horse between his legs while +clutching a rafter with his hands? did he throw his regiment before +him over a wall, as Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the +leap ("Memoires," i. 122)? No doubt Dumas believed what he heard +about this ancestor--in whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the +giant Porthos. In the Revolution and in the wars his father won the +name of Monsieur de l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a +guillotine; and of Horatius Cocles, because he held a pass as +bravely as the Roman "in the brave days of old." + +This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, generosity, +strength, remained the favourite virtues of Dumas. These he +preached and practised. They say he was generous before he was +just; it is to be feared this was true, but he gave even more freely +than he received. A regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; +he could not listen to a tale of misery but he gave what he had, and +sometimes left himself short of a dinner. He could not even turn a +dog out of doors. At his Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were +open to everybody but bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come +and stay: twelve came, making thirteen in all. The old butler +wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas consented, and repented. + +"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social +position and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive +from heaven force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. +Let them bide! But, in the interests of their own good luck, see +they are not thirteen, an unfortunate number!" + +"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away." + +"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some +three pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends +would cost thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say +my wine was good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this +fashion Dumas fared royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined +him as certainly as that other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. +He, too, had his miscellaneous kennel; he, too, gave while he had +anything to give, and, when he had nothing else, gave the work of +his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog, Mouton once flew at him and +bit one of his hands, while the other held the throat of the brute. +"Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful; what it once holds it +holds long--money excepted." He could not "haud a guid grip o' the +gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a prayer or +his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at them. + +"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard +murmuring, when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, +after wasting his time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither +man PREACHED socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian +principle: the goods of friends are common, and men are our +friends. + + +The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame +Dumas in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was +sadly to seek. Like most children destined to be bookish, he taught +himself to read very young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of +mythology. He knew all about Jupiter--like David Copperfield's Tom +Jones, "a child's Jupiter, an innocent creature"--all about every +god, goddess, fawn, dryad, nymph--and he never forgot this useful +information. Dear Lempriere, thou art superseded; but how much more +delightful thou art than the fastidious Smith or the learned +Preller! Dumas had one volume of the "Arabian Nights," with +Aladdin's lamp therein, the sacred lamp which he was to keep burning +with a flame so brilliant and so steady. It is pleasant to know +that, in his boyhood, this great romancer loved Virgil. "Little as +is my Latin, I have ever adored Virgil: his tenderness for exiles, +his melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of an unknown God, +have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me most, and +they lull me still between asleep and awake." School days did not +last long: Madame Dumas got a little post--a licence to sell +tobacco--and at fifteen Dumas entered a notary's office, like his +great Scotch forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the +stage--Racine and Corneille fatigued him prodigiously--till he saw +Hamlet: Hamlet diluted by Ducis. He had never heard of +Shakespeare, but here was something he could appreciate. Here was +"a profound impression, full of inexplicable emotion, vague desires, +fleeting lights, that, so far, lit up only a chaos." + +Oddly enough, his earliest literary essay was the translation of +Burger's "Lenore." Here, again, he encounters Scott; but Scott +translated the ballad, and Dumas failed. Les mortes vont vite! the +same refrain woke poetry in both the Frenchman and the Scotchman. + + +"Ha! ha! the Dead can ride with speed: +Dost fear to ride with me?" + + +So Dumas' literary career began with a defeat, but it was always a +beginning. He had just failed with "Lenore," when Leuven asked him +to collaborate in a play. He was utterly ignorant, he says; he had +not succeeded in gallant efforts to read through "Gil Blas" and "Don +Quixote." "To my shame," he writes, "the man has not been more +fortunate with those masterpieces than the boy." He had not yet +heard of Scott, Cooper, Goethe; he had heard of Shakespeare only as +a barbarian. Other plays the boy wrote--failures, of course--and +then Dumas poached his way to Paris, shooting partridges on the +road, and paying the hotel expenses by his success in the chase. He +was introduced to the great Talma: what a moment for Talma, had he +known it! He saw the theatres. He went home, but returned to +Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next a gentleman at +the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of Elzevirs, "Le +Pastissier Francais," and gave him a little lecture on Elzevirs in +general. Soon this gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was +turned out. He was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors +of the play he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks +verisimilitude. It reads as if Dumas had chanced to "get up" the +subject of Elzevirs, and had fashioned his new knowledge into a +little story. He could make a story out of anything--he "turned all +to favour and to prettiness." Could I translate the whole passage, +and print it here, it would be longer than this article; but, ah, +how much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas did he did with such +life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity, that his whole +career is one long romance of the highest quality. Lassagne told +him he must read--must read Goethe, Scott, Cooper, Froissart, +Joinville, Brantome. He read them to some purpose. He entered the +service of the Duc d'Orleans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear hand, +and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to have +written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for an hour +or two after shooting all the morning. The practice in a notary's +office stood him, as it stood Scott, in good stead. When a dog bit +his hand he managed to write a volume without using his thumb. I +have tried it, but forbear--in mercy to the printers. He performed +wild feats of rapid caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc d'Orleans, +and he wrote his plays in one "hand," his novels in another. The +"hand" used in his dramas he acquired when, in days of poverty, he +used to write in bed. To this habit he also attributed the +brutalite of his earlier pieces, but there seems to be no good +reason why a man should write like a brute because it is in bed that +he writes. + +In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and made a +study of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse was to rush at +danger; if he had to wait, he felt his courage oozing out at the +tips of his fingers, like Bob Acres, but in the moment of peril he +was himself again. In dreams he was a coward, because, as he +argues, the natural man IS a poltroon, and conscience, honour, all +the spiritual and commanding part of our nature, goes to sleep in +dreams. The animal terror asserts itself unchecked. It is a theory +not without exceptions. In dreams one has plenty of conscience (at +least that is my experience), though it usually takes the form of +remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers which, in waking +hours, one might probably avoid if one could. + + +Dumas' first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted in 1825. +His first novels were also published then; he took part of the risk, +and only four copies were sold. He afterward used the ideas in more +mature works, as Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu employed three or four times +(with perfect candour and fairness) the most curious incident in +"Uncle Silas." Like Mr. Arthur Pendennis, Dumas at this time wrote +poetry "up to" pictures and illustrations. It is easy, but seldom +lucrative work. He translated a play of Schiller's into French +verse, chiefly to gain command of that vehicle, for his heart was +fixed on dramatic success. Then came the visit of Kean and other +English actors to Paris. He saw the true Hamlet, and, for the first +time on any stage, "the play of real passions." Emulation woke in +him: a casual work of art led him to the story of Christina of +Sweden, he wrote his play Christine (afterward reconstructed); he +read it to Baron Taylor, who applauded; the Comedie Francaise +accepted it, but a series of intrigues disappointed him, after all. +His energy at this moment was extraordinary, for he was very poor, +his mother had a stroke of paralysis, his bureau was always bullying +and interfering with him. But nothing could snub this "force of +nature," and he immediately produced his Henri Trois, the first +romantic drama of France. This had an instant and noisy success, +and the first night of the play he spent at the theatre, and at the +bedside of his unconscious mother. The poor lady could not even +understand whence the flowers came that he laid on her couch, the +flowers thrown to the young man--yesterday unknown, and to-day the +most famous of contemporary names. All this tale of triumph, +checkered by enmities and diversified by duels, Dumas tells with the +vigour and wit of his novels. He is his own hero, and loses nothing +in the process; but the other characters--Taylor, Nodier, the Duc +d'Orleans, the spiteful press-men, the crabbed old officials--all +live like the best of the persons in his tales. They call Dumas +vain: he had reason to be vain, and no candid or generous reader +will be shocked by his pleasant, frank, and artless enjoyment of +himself and of his adventures. Oddly enough, they are small-minded +and small-hearted people who are most shocked by what they call +"vanity" in the great. Dumas' delight in himself and his doings is +only the flower of his vigorous existence, and in his "Memoires," at +least, it is as happy and encouraging as his laugh, or the laugh of +Porthos; it is a kind of radiance, in which others, too, may bask +and enjoy themselves. And yet it is resented by tiny scribblers, +frozen in their own chill self-conceit. + +There is nothing incredible (if modern researches are accurate) in +the stories he tells of his own success in Hypnotism, as it is +called now, Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was called then. Who was +likely to possess these powers, if not this good-humoured natural +force? "I believe that, by aid of magnetism, a bad man might do +much mischief. I doubt whether, by help of magnetism, a good man +can do the slightest good," he says, probably with perfect justice. +His dramatic success fired Victor Hugo, and very pleasant it is to +read Dumas' warm-hearted praise of that great poet. Dumas had no +jealousy--no more than Scott. As he believed in no success without +talent, so he disbelieved in genius which wins no success. "Je ne +crois pas au talent ignore, au genie inconnu, moi." Genius he +saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about invisible and +inaudible genius; and I own to sharing his scepticism. People who +complain of Dumas' vanity may be requested to observe that he seems +just as "vain" of Hugo's successes, or of Scribe's, as of his own, +and just as much delighted by them. + +He was now struck, as he walked on the boulevard one day, by the +first idea of Antony--an idea which, to be fair, seems rather absurd +than tragic, to some tastes. "A lover, caught with a married woman, +kills her to save her character, and dies on the scaffold." Here is +indeed a part to tear a cat in! + + +The performances of M. Dumas during the Revolution of 1830, are they +not written in the Book of the Chronicles of Alexandre the Great? +But they were not literary excellences which he then displayed, and +we may leave this king-maker to hover, "like an eagle, above the +storms of anarchy." + +Even to sketch his later biography is beyond our province. In 1830 +he had forty years to run, and he filled the cup of the Hours to the +brim with activity and adventure. His career was one of +unparalleled production, punctuated by revolutions, voyages, exiles, +and other intervals of repose. The tales he tells of his prowess in +1830, and with Garibaldi, seem credible to me, and are borne out, so +far, by the narrative of M. Maxime Ducamp, who met him at Naples, in +the Garibaldian camp. Like Mr. Jingle, in "Pickwick," he "banged +the field-piece, twanged the lyre," and was potting at the foes of +the republic with a double-barrelled gun, when he was not composing +plays, romances, memoirs, criticisms. He has told the tale of his +adventures with the Comedie Francaise, where the actors laughed at +his Antony, and where Madame Mars and he quarrelled and made it up +again. His plays often won an extravagant success; his novels--his +great novels, that is--made all Europe his friend. He gained large +sums of money, which flowed out of his fingers, though it is said by +some that his Abbotsford, Monte Cristo, was no more a palace than +the villa which a retired tradesman builds to shelter his old age. +But the money disappeared as fast as if Monte Cristo had really been +palatial, and worthy of the fantasy of a Nero. He got into debt, +fled to Belgium, returned, founded the Mousquetaire, a literary +paper of the strangest and most shiftless kind. In "Alexandre Dumas +e la Maison d'Or," M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale of this +Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, good or bad, and +the name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas, +unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no +reputation could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son +says, in the preface to Le Fils Naturel: "Tragedy, dramas, history, +romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the +mould of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new +creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too +narrow for your puissant shoulders; you fed France, Europe, America +with your works; you made the wealth of publishers, translators, +plagiarists; printers and copyists toiled after you in vain. In the +fever of production you did not always try and prove the metal which +you employed, and sometimes you tossed into the furnace whatever +came to your hand. The fire made the selection: what was your own +is bronze, what was not yours vanished in smoke." + +The simile is noble and worthy of the Cyclopean craftsman, Dumas. +His great works endured; the plays which renewed the youth of the +French stage, the novels which Thackeray loved to praise, these +remain, and we trust they may always remain, to the delight of +mankind and for the sorrow of prigs. + + +So much has been written of Dumas' novels that criticism can hardly +hope to say more that is both new and true about them. It is +acknowledged that, in such a character as Henri III., Dumas made +history live, as magically as Scott revived the past in his Louis +XI., or Balfour of Burley. It is admitted that Dumas' good tales +are told with a vigour and life which rejoice the heart; that his +narrative is never dull, never stands still, but moves with a +freedom of adventure which perhaps has no parallel. He may fall +short of the humour, the kindly wisdom, the genial greatness of Sir +Walter at his best, and he has not that supernatural touch, that +tragic grandeur, which Scott inherits from Homer and from +Shakespeare. In another Homeric quality, [Greek text], as Homer +himself calls it, in the "delight of battle" and the spirit of the +fray, Scott and Dumas are alike masters. Their fights and the +fights in the Icelandic sagas are the best that have ever been drawn +by mortal man. When swords are aloft, in siege or on the +greensward, or in the midnight chamber where an ambush is laid, +Scott and Dumas are indeed themselves. The steel rings, the +bucklers clash, the parry and lunge pass and answer too swift for +the sight. If Dumas has not, as he certainly has not, the noble +philosophy and kindly knowledge of the heart which are Scott's, he +is far more swift, more witty, more diverting. He is not prolix, +his style is not involved, his dialogue is as rapid and keen as an +assault at arms. His favourite virtues and graces, we repeat it, +are loyalty, friendship, gaiety, generosity, courage, beauty, and +strength. He is himself the friend of the big, stupid, excellent +Porthos; of Athos, the noble and melancholy swordsman of sorrow; of +D'Artagnan, the indomitable, the trusty, the inexhaustible in +resource; but his heart is never on the side of the shifty Aramis, +with all his beauty, dexterity, bravery, and brilliance. The brave +Bussy, and the chivalrous, the doomed La Mole, are more dear to him; +and if he embellishes their characters, giving them charms and +virtues that never were theirs, history loses nothing, and romance +and we are the gainers. In all he does, at his best, as in the +"Chevalier d'Harmenthal," he has movement, kindness, courage, and +gaiety. His philosophy of life is that old philosophy of the sagas +and of Homer. Let us enjoy the movement of the fray, the faces of +fair women, the taste of good wine; let us welcome life like a +mistress, let us welcome death like a friend, and with a jest--if +death comes with honour. + +Dumas is no pessimist. "Heaven has made but one drama for man--the +world," he writes, "and during these three thousand years mankind +has been hissing it." It is certain that, if a moral censorship +could have prevented it, this great drama of mortal passions would +never have been licensed, at all, never performed. But Dumas, for +one, will not hiss it, but applauds with all his might--a charmed +spectator, a fortunate actor in the eternal piece, where all the men +and women are only players. You hear his manly laughter, you hear +his mighty hands approving, you see the tears he sheds when he had +"slain Porthos"--great tears like those of Pantagruel. + + +His may not be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it IS a +philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the want. I read +the stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings of some modern men who +cannot write their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of +date. There is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of +dallyings and refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and +fearing some new order of the world. Dumas does not dally nor +doubt: he takes his side, he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his +foe; but there is never an unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging +thought in his heart. + +It may be said that Dumas is not a master of words and phrases, that +he is not a raffine of expression, nor a jeweller of style. When I +read the maunderings, the stilted and staggering sentences, the +hesitating phrases, the far-sought and dear-bought and worthless +word-juggles; the sham scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of +many modern so-called "stylists," I rejoice that Dumas was not one +of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited to a plain +tale, with abundance of wit and gaiety, as in the reflections of his +Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But he did not gnaw the end of his +pen in search of some word that nobody had ever used in this or that +connection before. The right word came to him, the simple +straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and +the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable epigrams +and rare specimens of style; but a plain tale of adventure, of love +and war, needs none of this industry, and is even spoiled by +inopportune diligence. Speed, directness, lucidity are the +characteristics of Dumas' style, and they are exactly the +characteristics which his novels required. Scott often failed, his +most loyal admirers may admit, in these essentials; but it is rarely +that Dumas fails, when he is himself and at his best. + +In spite of his heedless education, Dumas had true critical +qualities, and most admired the best things. We have already seen +how he writes about Shakespeare, Virgil, Goethe, Scott. But it may +be less familiarly known that this burly man-of-all-work, ignorant +as he was of Greek, had a true and keen appreciation of Homer. +Dumas declares that he only thrice criticised his contemporaries in +an unfavourable sense, and as one wishful to find fault. The +victims were Casimir Delavigne, Scribe, and Ponsard. On each +occasion Dumas declares that, after reflecting, he saw that he was +moved by a little personal pique, not by a disinterested love of +art. He makes his confession with a rare nobility of candour; and +yet his review of Ponsard is worthy of him. M. Ponsard, who, like +Dumas, was no scholar, wrote a play styled Ulysse, and borrowed from +the Odyssey. Dumas follows Ponsard, Odyssey in hand, and while he +proves that the dramatist failed to understand Homer, proves that he +himself was, in essentials, a capable Homeric critic. Dumas +understands that far-off heroic age. He lives in its life and +sympathises with its temper. Homer and he are congenial; across the +great gulf of time they exchange smiles and a salute. + +"Oh! ancient Homer, dear and good and noble, I am minded now and +again to leave all and translate thee--I, who have never a word of +Greek--so empty and so dismal are the versions men make of thee, in +verse or in prose." + +How Dumas came to divine Homer, as it were, through a language he +knew not, who shall say? He DID divine him by a natural sympathy of +excellence, and his chapters on the "Ulysse" of Ponsard are worth a +wilderness of notes by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, +indeed, who can be less like the heroic minstrel than the academic +philologist? + +This universality deserves note. The Homeric student who takes up a +volume of Dumas at random finds that he is not only Homeric +naturally, but that he really knows his Homer. What did he nor +know? His rapidity in reading must have been as remarkable as his +pace with the pen. As M. Blaze de Bury says: "Instinct, +experience, memory were all his; he sees at a glance, he compares in +a flash, he understands without conscious effort, he forgets nothing +that he has read." The past and present are photographed +imperishably on his brain, he knows the manners of all ages and all +countries, the names of all the arms that men have used, all the +garments they have worn, all the dishes they have tasted, all the +terms of all professions, from swordsmanship to coach-building. +Other authors have to wait, and hunt for facts; nothing stops Dumas: +he knows and remembers everything. Hence his rapidity, his +facility, his positive delight in labour: hence it came that he +might be heard, like Dickens, laughing while he worked. + + +This is rather a eulogy than a criticism of Dumas. His faults are +on the surface, visible to all men. He was not only rapid, he was +hasty, he was inconsistent; his need of money as well as his love of +work made him put his hand to dozens of perishable things. A +beginner, entering the forest of Dumas' books, may fail to see the +trees for the wood. He may be counselled to select first the cycle +of d'Artagnan--the "Musketeers," "Twenty Years After," and the +"Vicomte de Bragelonne." Mr. Stevenson's delightful essay on the +last may have sent many readers to it; I confess to preferring the +youth of the "Musketeers" to their old age. Then there is the cycle +of the Valois, whereof the "Dame de Monsereau" is the best--perhaps +the best thing Dumas ever wrote. The "Tulipe Noire" is a novel +girls may read, as Thackeray said, with confidence. The "Chevalier +d'Harmenthal" is nearly (not quite) as good as "Quentin Durward." +"Monte Cristo" has the best beginning--and loses itself in the +sands. The novels on the Revolution are not among the most +alluring: the famed device "L. P. D." (lilia pedibus destrue) has +the bad luck to suggest "London Parcels Delivery." That is an +accident, but the Revolution is in itself too terrible and pitiful, +and too near us (on both sides!) for fiction. + +On Dumas' faults it has been no pleasure to dwell. In a recent work +I find the Jesuit Le Moyne quoted, saying about Charles V.: "What +need that future ages should be made acquainted so religious an +Emperor was not always chaste!" The same reticence allures one in +regard to so delightful an author as Dumas. He who had enriched so +many died poor; he who had told of conquering France, died during +the Terrible Year. But he could forgive, could appreciate, the +valour of an enemy. Of the Scotch at Waterloo he writes: "It was +not enough to kill them: we had to push them down." Dead, they +still stood "shoulder to shoulder." In the same generous temper an +English cavalry officer wrote home, after Waterloo, that he would +gladly have given the rest of his life to have served, on that day, +in our infantry or in the French cavalry. These are the spirits +that warm the heart, that make us all friends; and to the great, the +brave, the generous Dumas we cry, across the years and across the +tomb, our Ave atque vale! + + + +MR. STEVENSON'S WORKS + + + +Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson's works, now so many and +so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the survival of +the child in him. He has told the world often, in prose and verse, +how vivid are his memories of his own infancy. This retention of +childish recollections he shares, no doubt, with other people of +genius: for example, with George Sand, whose legend of her own +infancy is much more entertaining, and perhaps will endure longer, +than her novels. Her youth, like Scott's and like Mr. Stevenson's, +was passed all in fantasy: in playing at being some one else, in +the invention of imaginary characters, who were living to her, in +the fabrication of endless unwritten romances. Many persons, who do +not astonish the world by their genius, have lived thus in their +earliest youth. But, at a given moment, the fancy dies out of them: +this often befalls imaginative boys in their first year at school. +"Many are called, few chosen"; but it may be said with probable +truth, that there has never been a man of genius in letters, whose +boyhood was not thus fantastic, "an isle of dreams." We know how +Scott and De Quincey inhabited airy castles; and Gillies tells us, +though Lockhart does not, that Scott, in manhood, was occasionally +so lost in thought, that he knew not where he was nor what he was +doing. + +The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a +fantastic child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened +into imagination: he has also kept up the habit of dramatising +everything, of playing, half consciously, many parts, of making the +world "an unsubstantial fairy place." This turn of mind it is that +causes his work occasionally to seem somewhat freakish. Thus, in +the fogs and horrors of London, he plays at being an Arabian tale- +teller, and his "New Arabian Nights" are a new kind of romanticism-- +Oriental, freakish, like the work of a changeling. Indeed, this +curious genius, springing from a family of Scottish engineers, +resembles nothing so much as one of the fairy children, whom the +ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in the cradles of +Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has little +but the power of touching us with a sense of the supernatural, and a +decided habit of moralising; for no Scot of genius has been more +austere with Robert Burns. On the other hand, one element of Mr. +Stevenson's ethical disquisitions is derived from his dramatic +habit. His optimism, his gay courage, his habit of accepting the +world as very well worth living in and looking at, persuaded one of +his critics that he was a hard-hearted young athlete of iron frame. +Now, of the athlete he has nothing but his love of the open air: it +is the eternal child that drives him to seek adventures and to +sojourn among beach-combers and savages. Thus, an admiring but far +from optimistic critic may doubt whether Mr. Stevenson's content +with the world is not "only his fun," as Lamb said of Coleridge's +preaching; whether he is but playing at being the happy warrior in +life; whether he is not acting that part, himself to himself. At +least, it is a part fortunately conceived and admirably sustained: +a difficult part too, whereas that of the pessimist is as easy as +whining. + +Mr. Stevenson's work has been very much written about, as it has +engaged and delighted readers of every age, station, and character. +Boys, of course, have been specially addressed in the books of +adventure, children in "A Child's Garden of Verse," young men and +maidens in "Virginibus Puerisque,"--all ages in all the curiously +varied series of volumes. "Kidnapped" was one of the last books +which the late Lord Iddesleigh read; and I trust there is no harm in +mentioning the pleasure which Mr. Matthew Arnold took in the same +story. Critics of every sort have been kind to Mr. Stevenson, in +spite of the fact that the few who first became acquainted with his +genius praised it with all the warmth of which they were masters. +Thus he has become a kind of classic in his own day, for an +undisputed reputation makes a classic while it lasts. But was ever +so much fame won by writings which might be called scrappy and +desultory by the advocatus diaboli? It is a most miscellaneous +literary baggage that Mr. Stevenson carries. First, a few magazine +articles; then two little books of sentimental journeyings, which +convince the reader that Mr. Stevenson is as good company to himself +as his books are to others. Then came a volume or two of essays, +literary and social, on books and life. By this time there could be +no doubt that Mr. Stevenson had a style of his own, modelled to some +extent on the essayists of the last century, but with touches of +Thackeray; with original breaks and turns, with a delicate +freakishness, in short, and a determined love of saying things as +the newspapers do not say them. All this work undoubtedly smelt a +trifle of the lamp, and was therefore dear to some, and an offence +to others. For my part, I had delighted in the essays, from the +first that appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, shortly after the +Franco-German war. In this little study, "Ordered South," Mr. +Stevenson was employing himself in extracting all the melancholy +pleasure which the Riviera can give to a wearied body and a mind +resisting the clouds of early malady, + + +"Alas, the worn and broken board, +How can it bear the painter's dye! +The harp of strained and tuneless chord, +How to the minstrel's skill reply! +To aching eyes each landscape lowers, +To feverish pulse each gale blows chill, +And Araby's or Eden's bowers +Were barren as this moorland hill," - + + +wrote Scott, in an hour of malady and depression. But this was not +the spirit of "Ordered South": the younger soul rose against the +tyranny of the body; and that familiar glamour which, in illness, +robs Tintoretto of his glow, did not spoil the midland sea to Mr. +Stevenson. His gallant and cheery stoicism were already with him; +and so perfect, if a trifle overstudied, was his style, that one +already foresaw a new and charming essayist. + +But none of those early works, nor the delightful book on Edinburgh, +prophesied of the story teller. Mr. Stevenson's first published +tales, the "New Arabian Nights," originally appeared in a quaintly +edited weekly paper, which nobody read, or nobody but the writers in +its columns. They welcomed the strange romances with rejoicings: +but perhaps there was only one of them who foresaw that Mr. +Stevenson's forte was to be fiction, not essay writing; that he was +to appeal with success to the large public, and not to the tiny +circle who surround the essayist. It did not seem likely that our +incalculable public would make themselves at home in those fantastic +purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the Strand. +The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly revels of +the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs--who +could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr. +Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the +cowardly member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His +romance always goes hand in hand with reality; and Mr. Malthus is as +much an actual man of skin and bone, as Silas Lapham is a man of +flesh and blood. The world saw this, and applauded the "Noctes of +Prince Floristan," in a fairy London. + +Yet, excellent and unique as these things were, Mr. Stevenson had +not yet "found himself." It would be more true to say that he had +only discovered outlying skirts of his dominions. Has he ever hit +on the road to the capital yet? and will he ever enter it laurelled, +and in triumph? That is precisely what one may doubt, not as +without hope. He is always making discoveries in his realm; it is +less certain that he will enter its chief city in state. His next +work was rather in the nature of annexation and invasion than a +settling of his own realms. "Prince Otto" is not, to my mind, a +ruler in his proper soil. The provinces of George Sand and of Mr. +George Meredith have been taken captive. "Prince Otto" is fantastic +indeed, but neither the fantasy nor the style is quite Mr. +Stevenson's. There are excellent passages, and the Scotch soldier +of fortune is welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. +But the book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and +skilful pastiche. I cannot believe in the persons. I vaguely smell +a moral allegory (as in "Will of the Mill"). I do not clearly +understand what it is all about. The scene is fairyland; but it is +not the fairyland of Perrault. The ladies are beautiful and witty; +but they are escaped from a novel of Mr. Meredith's, and have no +business here. The book is no more Mr. Stevenson's than "The Tale +of Two Cities" was Mr. Dickens's. + +It was probably by way of mere diversion and child's play that Mr. +Stevenson began "Treasure Island." He is an amateur of boyish +pleasures of masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured. +Probably he had looked at the stories of adventure in penny papers +which only boys read, and he determined sportively to compete with +their unknown authors. "Treasure Island" came out in such a +periodical, with the emphatic woodcuts which adorn them. It is said +that the puerile public was not greatly stirred. A story is a +story, and they rather preferred the regular purveyors. The very +faint archaism of the style may have alienated them. But, when +"Treasure Island" appeared as a real book, then every one who had a +smack of youth left was a boy again for some happy hours. Mr. +Stevenson had entered into another province of his realm: the king +had come to his own again. + +They say the seamanship is inaccurate; I care no more than I do for +the year 30. They say too many people are killed. They all died in +fair fight, except a victim of John Silver's. The conclusion is a +little too like part of Poe's most celebrated tale, but nobody has +bellowed "Plagiarist!" Some people may not look over a fence: Mr. +Stevenson, if he liked, might steal a horse,--the animal in this +case is only a skeleton. A very sober student might add that the +hero is impossibly clever; but, then, the hero is a boy, and this is +a boy's book. For the rest, the characters live. Only genius could +have invented John Silver, that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. +Nothing but genius could have drawn that simple yokel on the island, +with his craving for cheese as a Christian dainty. The blustering +Billy Bones is a little masterpiece: the blind Pew, with his +tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers in Mr. Stevenson's +books), strikes terror into the boldest. Then, the treasure is +thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there is plenty of it. The +landscape, as in the feverish, fog-smothered flat, is gallantly +painted. And there are no interfering petticoats in the story. + +As for the "Black Arrow," I confess to sharing the disabilities of +the "Critic on the Hearth," to whom it is dedicated. "Kidnapped" is +less a story than a fragment; but it is a noble fragment. Setting +aside the wicked old uncle, who in his later behaviour is of the +house of Ralph Nickleby, "Kidnapped" is all excellent--perhaps Mr. +Stevenson's masterpiece. Perhaps, too, only a Scotchman knows how +good it is, and only a Lowland Scot knows how admirable a character +is the dour, brave, conceited David Balfour. It is like being in +Scotland again to come on "the green drive-road running wide through +the heather," where David "took his last look of Kirk Essendean, the +trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard, where his +father and mother lay." Perfectly Scotch, too, is the mouldering, +empty house of the Miser, with the stamped leather on the walls. +And the Miser is as good as a Scotch Trapbois, till he becomes +homicidal, and then one fails to recognise him unless he is a little +mad, like that other frantic uncle in "The Merry Men." The scenes +on the ship, with the boy who is murdered, are better--I think more +real--than the scenes of piratical life in "The Master of +Ballantrae." The fight in the Round House, even if it were +exaggerated, would be redeemed by the "Song of the Sword of Alan." +As to Alan Breck himself, with his valour and vanity, his good +heart, his good conceit of himself, his fantastic loyalty, he is +absolutely worthy of the hand that drew Callum Bey and the Dougal +creature. It is just possible that we see, in "Kidnapped," more +signs of determined labour, more evidence of touches and retouches, +than in "Rob Roy." In nothing else which it attempts is it +inferior; in mastery of landscape, as in the scene of the lonely +rock in a dry and thirsty land, it is unsurpassed. If there are +signs of laboured handling on Alan, there are none in the sketches +of Cluny and of Rob Roy's son, the piper. What a generous artist is +Alan! "Robin Oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great +piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with you. Body of +me! ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head." + +"Kidnapped," we said, is a fragment. It ends anywhere, or nowhere, +as if the pen had dropped from a weary hand. Thus, and for other +reasons, one cannot pretend to set what is not really a whole +against such a rounded whole as "Rob Roy," or against "The Legend of +Montrose." Again, "Kidnapped" is a novel without a woman in it: +not here is Di Vernon, not here is Helen McGregor. David Balfour is +the pragmatic Lowlander; he does not bear comparison, excellent as +he is, with Baillie Nicol Jarvie, the humorous Lowlander: he does +not live in the memory like the immortal Baillie. It is as a series +of scenes and sketches that "Kidnapped" is unmatched among Mr. +Stevenson's works. + +In "The Master of Ballantrae" Mr. Stevenson makes a gallant effort +to enter what I have ventured to call the capital of his kingdom. +He does introduce a woman, and confronts the problems of love as +well as of fraternal hatred. The "Master" is studied, is polished +ad unguem; it is a whole in itself, it is a remarkably daring +attempt to write the tragedy, as, in "Waverley," Scott wrote the +romance, of Scotland about the time of the Forty-Five. With such a +predecessor and rival, Mr. Stevenson wisely leaves the pomps and +battles of the Forty-Five, its chivalry and gallantry, alone. He +shows us the seamy side: the intrigues, domestic and political; the +needy Irish adventurer with the Prince, a person whom Scott had not +studied. The book, if completely successful, would be Mr. +Stevenson's "Bride of Lammermoor." To be frank, I do not think it +completely successful--a victory all along the line. The obvious +weak point is Secundra Dass, that Indian of unknown nationality; for +surely his name marks him as no Hindoo. The Master could not have +brought him, shivering like Jos Sedley's black servant, to Scotland. +As in America, this alien would have found it "too dam cold." My +power of belief (which verges on credulity) is staggered by the +ghastly attempt to reanimate the buried Master. Here, at least to +my taste, the freakish changeling has got the better of Mr. +Stevenson, and has brought in an element out of keeping with the +steady lurid tragedy of fraternal hatred. For all the rest, it were +a hard judge that had anything but praise. The brilliant +blackguardism of the Master; his touch of sentiment as he leaves +Durisdeer for the last time, with a sad old song on his lips; his +fascination; his ruthlessness; his irony;--all are perfect. It is +not very easy to understand the Chevalier Bourke, that Barry Lyndon, +with no head and with a good heart, that creature of a bewildered +kindly conscience; but it is easy to like him. How admirable is his +undeflected belief in and affection for the Master! How excellent +and how Irish he is, when he buffoons himself out of his perils with +the pirates! The scenes are brilliant and living, as when the +Master throws the guinea through the Hall window, or as in the +darkling duel in the garden. It needed an austere artistic +conscience to make Henry, the younger brother, so unlovable with all +his excellence, and to keep the lady so true, yet so much in shadow. +This is the best woman among Mr. Stevenson's few women; but even she +is almost always reserved, veiled as it were. + +The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could have +drawn, and more delicately touched than Scott would have cared to +draw it: a French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The +whole piece reads as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with +himself as he wrote. The sky is never blue, the sun never shines: +we weary for a "westland wind." There is something "thrawn," as the +Scotch say, about the story; there is often a touch of this sinister +kind in the author's work. The language is extraordinarily artful, +as in the mad lord's words, "I have felt the hilt dirl on his +breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled as one expects to be, +when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse looked me for a moment +in the face." + +Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so +familiar as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in +manuscript, alone, at night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson +came to the Doctor's door, I confess that I threw it down, and went +hastily to bed. It is the most gruesome of all his writings, and so +perfect that one can complain only of the slightly too obvious +moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was more of a gentleman than +the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside manner." + +So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like "Thrawn +Janet," is a brief catalogue--little more--of Mr. Stevenson's +literary baggage. It is all good, though variously good; yet the +wise world asks for the masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson +has not ventured on the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel, +because he has not written a modern love story. But who has? There +are love affairs in Dickens, but do we remember or care for them? +Is it the love affairs that we remember in Scott? Thackeray may +touch us with Clive's and Jack Belsize's misfortunes, with Esmond's +melancholy passion, and amuse us with Pen in so many toils, and +interest us in the little heroine of the "Shabby Genteel Story." +But it is not by virtue of those episodes that Thackeray is so +great. Love stories are best done by women, as in "Mr. Gilfil's +Love Story"; and, perhaps, in an ordinary way, by writers like +Trollope. One may defy critics to name a great English author in +fiction whose chief and distinguishing merit is in his pictures of +the passion of Love. Still, they all give Love his due stroke in +the battle, and perhaps Mr. Stevenson will do so some day. But I +confess that, if he ever excels himself, I do not expect it to be in +a love story. + +Possibly it may be in a play. If he again attempt the drama, he has +this in his favour, that he will not deal in supernumeraries. In +his tales his minor characters are as carefully drawn as his chief +personages. Consider, for example, the minister, Henderland, the +man who is so fond of snuff, in "Kidnapped," and, in the "Master of +Ballantrae," Sir William Johnson, the English Governor. They are +the work of a mind as attentive to details, as ready to subordinate +or obliterate details which are unessential. Thus Mr. Stevenson's +writings breathe equally of work in the study and of inspiration +from adventure in the open air, and thus he wins every vote, and +pleases every class of reader. + + + +THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY + + + +I cannot sing the old songs, nor indeed any others, but I can read +them, in the neglected works of Thomas Haynes Bayly. The name of +Bayly may be unfamiliar, but every one almost has heard his ditties +chanted--every one much over forty, at all events. "I'll hang my +Harp on a Willow Tree," and "I'd be a Butterfly," and "Oh, no! we +never mention Her," are dimly dear to every friend of Mr. Richard +Swiveller. If to be sung everywhere, to hear your verses uttered in +harmony with all pianos and quoted by the world at large, be fame, +Bayly had it. He was an unaffected poet. He wrote words to airs, +and he is almost absolutely forgotten. To read him is to be carried +back on the wings of music to the bowers of youth; and to the bowers +of youth I have been wafted, and to the old booksellers. You do not +find on every stall the poems of Bayly; but a copy in two volumes +has been discovered, edited by Mr. Bayly's widow (Bentley, 1844). +They saw the light in the same year as the present critic, and +perhaps they ceased to be very popular before he was breeched. Mr. +Bayly, according to Mrs. Bayly, "ably penetrated the sources of the +human heart," like Shakespeare and Mr. Howells. He also "gave to +minstrelsy the attributes of intellect and wit," and "reclaimed even +festive song from vulgarity," in which, since the age of Anacreon, +festive song has notoriously wallowed. The poet who did all this +was born at Bath in Oct. 1797. His father was a genteel solicitor, +and his great-grandmother was sister to Lord Delamere, while he had +a remote baronet on the mother's side. To trace the ancestral +source of his genius was difficult, as in the case of Gifted +Hopkins; but it was believed to flow from his maternal grandfather, +Mr. Freeman, whom his friend, Lord Lavington, regarded as "one of +the finest poets of his age." Bayly was at school at Winchester, +where he conducted a weekly college newspaper. His father, like +Scott's, would have made him a lawyer; but "the youth took a great +dislike to it, for his ideas loved to dwell in the regions of +fancy," which are closed to attorneys. So he thought of being a +clergyman, and was sent to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford. There "he did +not apply himself to the pursuit of academical honours," but fell in +love with a young lady whose brother he had tended in a fatal +illness. But "they were both too wise to think of living upon love, +and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to meet again. +The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and soon became the +wife of another." They usually do. Mr. Bayly's regret was more +profound, and expressed itself in the touching ditty: + + +"Oh, no, we never mention her, +Her name is never heard, +My lips are now forbid to speak +That once familiar word; +From sport to sport they hurry me +To banish my regret, +And when they only worry me - + +[I beg Mr. Bayly's pardon] + +"And when they win a smile from me, +They fancy I forget. + +"They bid me seek in change of scene +The charms that others see, +But were I in a foreign land +They'd find no change in me. +'Tis true that I behold no more +The valley where we met; +I do not see the hawthorn tree, +But how can I forget?" + +* * * + +"They tell me she is happy now, + +[And so she was, in fact.] + +The gayest of the gay; +They hint that she's forgotten me; +But heed not what they say. +Like me, perhaps, she struggles with +Each feeling of regret: +'Tis true she's married Mr. Smith, +But, ah, does she forget!" + + +The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, +actually and in an authentic text, are: + + +"But if she loves as I have loved, +She never can forget." + + +Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the +early, innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated him: + + +"R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine, +Dost thou remember Jeames!" + + +We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this: + + +"Love spake to me and said: +'Oh, lips, be mute; +Let that one name be dead, +That memory flown and fled, +Untouched that lute! +Go forth,' said Love, 'with willow in thy hand, +And in thy hair +Dead blossoms wear, +Blown from the sunless land. + +"'Go forth,' said Love; 'thou never more shalt see +Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree; +But SHE is glad, +With roses crowned and clad, +Who hath forgotten thee!' +But I made answer: 'Love! +Tell me no more thereof, +For she has drunk of that same cup as I. +Yea, though her eyes be dry, +She garners there for me +Tears salter than the sea, +Even till the day she die.' +So gave I Love the lie." + + +I declare I nearly weep over these lines; for, though they are only +Bayly's sentiment hastily recast in a modern manner, there is +something so very affecting, mouldy, and unwholesome about them, +that they sound as if they had been "written up to" a sketch by a +disciple of Mr. Rossetti's. + +In a mood much more manly and moral, Mr. Bayly wrote another poem to +the young lady: + + +"May thy lot in life be happy, undisturbed by thoughts of me, +The God who shelters innocence thy guard and guide will be. +Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at last, +And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the past." + + +It is as easy as prose to sing in this manner. For example: + + +"In fact, we need not be concerned; 'at last' comes very soon, and +our Emilia quite forgets the memory of the moon, the moon that shone +on her and us, the woods that heard our vows, the moaning of the +waters, and the murmur of the boughs. She is happy with another, +and by her we're quite forgot; she never lets a thought of us bring +shadow on her lot; and if we meet at dinner she's too clever to +repine, and mentions us to Mr. Smith as 'An old flame of mine.' And +shall I grieve that it is thus? and would I have her weep, and lose +her healthy appetite and break her healthy sleep? Not so, she's not +poetical, though ne'er shall I forget the fairy of my fancy whom I +once thought I had met. The fairy of my fancy! It was fancy, most +things are; her emotions were not steadfast as the shining of a +star; but, ah, I love her image yet, as once it shone on me, and +swayed me as the low moon sways the surging of the sea." + + +Among other sports his anxious friends hurried the lovelorn Bayly to +Scotland, where he wrote much verse, and then to Dublin, which +completed his cure. "He seemed in the midst of the crowd the gayest +of all, his laughter rang merry and loud at banquet and hall." He +thought no more of studying for the Church, but went back to Bath, +met a Miss Hayes, was fascinated by Miss Hayes, "came, saw, but did +NOT conquer at once," says Mrs. Haynes Bayly (nee Hayes) with +widow's pride. Her lovely name was Helena; and I deeply regret to +add that, after an education at Oxford, Mr. Bayly, in his poems, +accentuated the penultimate, which, of course, is short. + + +"Oh, think not, Helena, of leaving us yet," + + +he carolled, when it would have been just as easy, and a hundred +times more correct, to sing - + + +"Oh, Helena, think not of leaving us yet." + + +Miss Hayes had lands in Ireland, alas! and Mr. Bayly insinuated +that, like King Easter and King Wester in the ballad, her lovers +courted her for her lands and her fee; but he, like King Honour, + + +"For her bonny face +And for her fair bodie." + + +In 1825 (after being elected to the Athenaeum) Mr. Bayly "at last +found favour in the eyes of Miss Hayes." He presented her with a +little ruby heart, which she accepted, and they were married, and at +first were well-to-do, Miss Hayes being the heiress of Benjamin +Hayes, Esq., of Marble Hill, in county Cork. A friend of Mr. +Bayly's described him thus: + + +"I never have met on this chilling earth +So merry, so kind, so frank a youth, +In moments of pleasure a smile all mirth, +In moments of sorrow a heart of truth. +I have heard thee praised, I have seen thee led +By Fashion along her gay career; +While beautiful lips have often shed +Their flattering poison in thine ear." + + +Yet he says that the poet was unspoiled. On his honeymoon, at Lord +Ashdown's, Mr. Bayly, flying from some fair sirens, retreated to a +bower, and there wrote his world-famous "I'd be a Butterfly." + + +"I'd be a butterfly, living a rover, +Dying when fair things are fading away." + + +The place in which the deathless strains welled from the singer's +heart was henceforth known as "Butterfly Bower." He now wrote a +novel, "The Aylmers," which has gone where the old moons go, and he +became rather a literary lion, and made the acquaintance of Theodore +Hook. The loss of a son caused him to write some devotional verses, +which were not what he did best; and now he began to try comedies. +One of them, Sold for a Song, succeeded very well. In the stage- +coach between Wycombe Abbey and London he wrote a successful little +lever de rideau called Perfection; and it was lucky that he opened +this vein, for his wife's Irish property got into an Irish bog of +dishonesty and difficulty. Thirty-five pieces were contributed by +him to the British stage. After a long illness, he died on April +22nd, 1829. He did not live, this butterfly minstrel, into the +winter of human age. + +Of his poems the inevitable criticism must be that he was a Tom +Moore of much lower accomplishments. His business was to carol of +the most vapid and obvious sentiment, and to string flowers, fruits, +trees, breeze, sorrow, to-morrow, knights, coal-black steeds, +regret, deception, and so forth, into fervid anapaestics. Perhaps +his success lay in knowing exactly how little sense in poetry +composers will endure and singers will accept. Why, "words for +music" are almost invariably trash now, though the words of +Elizabethan songs are better than any music, is a gloomy and +difficult question. Like most poets, I myself detest the sister +art, and don't know anything about it. But any one can see that +words like Bayly's are and have long been much more popular with +musical people than words like Shelley's, Keats's, Shakespeare's, +Fletcher's, Lovelace's, or Carew's. The natural explanation is not +flattering to musical people: at all events, the singing world +doted on Bayly. + + +"She never blamed him--never, +But received him when he came +With a welcome sort of shiver, +And she tried to look the same. + +"But vainly she dissembled, +For whene'er she tried to smile, +A tear unbidden trembled +In her blue eye all the while." + + +This was pleasant for "him"; but the point is that these are lines +to an Indian air. Shelley, also, about the same time, wrote Lines +to an Indian air; but we may "swear, and save our oath," that the +singers preferred Bayly's. Tennyson and Coleridge could never equal +the popularity of what follows. I shall ask the persevering reader +to tell me where Bayly ends, and where parody begins: + + +"When the eye of beauty closes, +When the weary are at rest, +When the shade the sunset throws is +But a vapour in the west; +When the moonlight tips the billow +With a wreath of silver foam, +And the whisper of the willow +Breaks the slumber of the gnome, - +Night may come, but sleep will linger, +When the spirit, all forlorn, +Shuts its ear against the singer, +And the rustle of the corn +Round the sad old mansion sobbing +Bids the wakeful maid recall +Who it was that caused the throbbing +Of her bosom at the ball." + + +Will this not do to sing just as well as the original? and is it not +true that "almost any man you please could reel it off for days +together"? Anything will do that speaks of forgetting people, and +of being forsaken, and about the sunset, and the ivy, and the rose. + + +"Tell me no more that the tide of thine anguish +Is red as the heart's blood and salt as the sea; +That the stars in their courses command thee to languish, +That the hand of enjoyment is loosened from thee! + +"Tell me no more that, forgotten, forsaken, +Thou roamest the wild wood, thou sigh'st on the shore. +Nay, rent is the pledge that of old we had taken, +And the words that have bound me, they bind thee no more! + +"Ere the sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens +Were wreathing the orange's bud in thy hair, +And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence +That gave thee, a bride, to the baronet's heir. + +"Farewell, may no thought pierce thy breast of thy treason; +Farewell, and be happy in Hubert's embrace. +Be the belle of the ball, be the bride of the season, +With diamonds bedizened and languid in lace." + + +This is mine, and I say, with modest pride, that it is quite as good +as - + + +"Go, may'st thou be happy, +Though sadly we part, +In life's early summer +Grief breaks not the heart. + +"The ills that assail us +As speedily pass +As shades o'er a mirror, +Which stain not the glass." + + +Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls "the mad pride +of intellectuality," and it certainly looks as if it could be done +by anybody. For example, take Bayly as a moralist. His ideas are +out of the centre. This is about his standard: + + +"CRUELTY. + +"'Break not the thread the spider +Is labouring to weave.' +I said, nor as I eyed her +Could dream she would deceive. + +"Her brow was pure and candid, +Her tender eyes above; +And I, if ever man did, +Fell hopelessly in love. + +"For who could deem that cruel +So fair a face might be? +That eyes so like a jewel +Were only paste for me? + +"I wove my thread, aspiring +Within her heart to climb; +I wove with zeal untiring +For ever such a time! + +"But, ah! that thread was broken +All by her fingers fair, +The vows and prayers I've spoken +Are vanished into air!" + + +Did Bayly write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly +tell. I am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the +numbers come like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without +abounding in his artless vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was +Bayly after all, not you nor I, who wrote the classic - + + +"I'll hang my harp on a willow tree, +And I'll go to the war again, +For a peaceful home has no charm for me, +A battlefield no pain; +The lady I love will soon be a bride, +With a diadem on her brow. +Ah, why did she flatter my boyish pride? +She is going to leave me now!" + + +It is like listening, in the sad yellow evening, to the strains of a +barrel organ, faint and sweet, and far away. A world of memories +come jigging back--foolish fancies, dreams, desires, all beckoning +and bobbing to the old tune: + + +"Oh had I but loved with a boyish love, +It would have been well for me." + + +How does Bayly manage it? What is the trick of it, the obvious, +simple, meretricious trick, which somehow, after all, let us mock as +we will, Bayly could do, and we cannot? He really had a slim, +serviceable, smirking, and sighing little talent of his own; and-- +well, we have not even that. Nobody forgets + + +"The lady I love will soon be a bride." + + +Nobody remembers our cultivated epics and esoteric sonnets, oh +brother minor poet, mon semblable, mon frere! Nor can we rival, +though we publish our books on the largest paper, the buried +popularity of + + +"Gaily the troubadour +Touched his guitar +When he was hastening +Home from the war, +Singing, "From Palestine +Hither I come, +Lady love! Lady love! +Welcome me home!" + + +Of course this is, historically, a very incorrect rendering of a +Languedoc crusader; and the impression is not mediaeval, but of the +comic opera. Any one of us could get in more local colour for the +money, and give the crusader a cithern or citole instead of a +guitar. This is how we should do "Gaily the Troubadour" nowadays:- + + +"Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +Soldans seven hath he slain in fight, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"Sir Ralph he rideth in riven mail, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +Beneath his nasal is his dark face pale, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"His eyes they blaze as the burning coal, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +He smiteth a stave on his gold citole, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"From her mangonel she looketh forth, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +'Who is he spurreth so late to the north?' +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"Hark! for he speaketh a knightly name, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +And her wan cheek glows as a burning flame, +Honneur e la belle Isoline! + +"For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, +Ha, la belle blanche aubepine! +And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night, +Honneur e la belle Isoline!" + +Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of saying - + + +"Hark, 'tis the troubadour +Breathing her name +Under the battlement +Softly he came, +Singing, "From Palestine +Hither I come. +Lady love! Lady love! +Welcome me home!" + + +The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and +that the butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the +fashion of a time simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the +whole, minor poetry for minor poetry, this artless singer, piping +his native drawing-room notes, gave a great deal of perfectly +harmless, if highly uncultivated, enjoyment. + +It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to his +bow--or, rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great deal, to be sure, +about the passion of love, which Count Tolstoi thinks we make too +much of. He did not dream that the affairs of the heart should be +regulated by the State--by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage +Office. That is what we are coming to, of course, unless the +enthusiasts of "free love" and "go away as you please" failed with +their little programme. No doubt there would be poetry if the State +regulated or left wholly unregulated the affections of the future. +Mr. Bayly, living in other times, among other manners, piped of the +hard tyranny of a mother: + + +"We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me. +He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me. +He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered, +I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered. +I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness; +Bright gems were in my hair,--how I hated their brightness! +He called me by my name as the bride of another. +Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!" + + +In future, when the reformers of marriage have had their way, we +shall read: + + +"The world may think me gay, for I bow to my fate; +But thou hast been the cause of my anguish, O State!" + + +For even when true love is regulated by the County Council or the +village community, it will still persist in not running smooth. + +Of these passions, then, Mr. Bayly could chant; but let us remember +that he could also dally with old romance, that he wrote: + + +"The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, +The holly branch shone on the old oak wall." + + +When the bride unluckily got into the ancient chest, + + +"It closed with a spring. And, dreadful doom, +The bride lay clasped in her living tomb," + + +so that her lover "mourned for his fairy bride," and never found out +her premature casket. This was true romance as understood when Peel +was consul. Mr. Bayly was rarely political; but he commemorated the +heroes of Waterloo, our last victory worth mentioning: + + +"Yet mourn not for them, for in future tradition +Their fame shall abide as our tutelar star, +To instil by example the glorious ambition +Of falling, like them, in a glorious war. +Though tears may be seen in the bright eyes of beauty, +One consolation must ever remain: +Undaunted they trod in the pathway of duty, +Which led them to glory on Waterloo's plain." + + +Could there be a more simple Tyrtaeus? and who that reads him will +not be ambitious of falling in a glorious war? Bayly, indeed, is +always simple. He is "simple, sensuous, and passionate," and Milton +asked no more from a poet. + + +"A wreath of orange blossoms, +When next we met, she wore. +The expression of her features +Was more thoughtful than before." + + +On his own principles Wordsworth should have admired this unaffected +statement; but Wordsworth rarely praised his contemporaries, and +said that "Guy Mannering" was a respectable effort in the style of +Mrs. Radcliffe. Nor did he even extol, though it is more in his own +line, + + +"Of what is the old man thinking, +As he leans on his oaken staff?" + + +My own favourite among Mr. Bayly's effusions is not a sentimental +ode, but the following gush of true natural feeling:- + + +"Oh, give me new faces, new faces, new faces, +I've seen those around me a fortnight and more. +Some people grow weary of things or of places, +But persons to me are a much greater bore. +I care not for features, I'm sure to discover +Some exquisite trait in the first that you send. +My fondness falls off when the novelty's over; +I want a new face for an intimate friend." + + +This is perfectly candid: we should all prefer a new face, if +pretty, every fortnight: + + +"Come, I pray you, and tell me this, +All good fellows whose beards are grey, +Did not the fairest of the fair +Common grow and wearisome ere +Ever a month had passed away?" + + +For once Mr. Bayly uttered in his "New Faces" a sentiment not +usually expressed, but universally felt; and now he suffers, as a +poet, because he is no longer a new face, because we have welcomed +his juniors. To Bayly we shall not return; but he has one rare +merit,--he is always perfectly plain-spoken and intelligible. + + +"Farewell to my Bayly, farewell to the singer +Whose tender effusions my aunts used to sing; +Farewell, for the fame of the bard does not linger, +My favourite minstrel's no longer the thing. +But though on his temples has faded the laurel, +Though broken the lute, and though veiled is the crest, +My Bayly, at worst, is uncommonly moral, +Which is more than some new poets are, at their best." + + +Farewell to our Bayly, about whose songs we may say, with Mr. +Thackeray in "Vanity Fair," that "they contain numberless good- +natured, simple appeals to the affections." We are no longer +affectionate, good-natured, simple. We are cleverer than Bayly's +audience; but are we better fellows? + + + +THEODORE DE BANVILLE + + + +There are literary reputations in France and England which seem, +like the fairies, to be unable to cross running water. Dean Swift, +according to M. Paul de Saint-Victor, is a great man at Dover, a +pigmy at Calais--"Son talent, qui enthousiasme l'Angleterre, +n'inspire ailleurs qu'un morne etonnement." M. Paul De Saint-Victor +was a fair example of the French critic, and what he says about +Swift was possibly true,--for him. There is not much resemblance +between the Dean and M. Theodore de Banville, except that the latter +too is a poet who has little honour out of his own country. He is a +charming singer at Calais; at Dover he inspires un morne etonnement +(a bleak perplexity). One has never seen an English attempt to +describe or estimate his genius. His unpopularity in England is +illustrated by the fact that the London Library, that respectable +institution, does not, or did not, possess a single copy of any one +of his books. He is but feebly represented even in the collection +of the British Museum. It is not hard to account for our +indifference to M. De Banville. He is a poet not only intensely +French, but intensely Parisian. He is careful of form, rather than +abundant in manner. He has no story to tell, and his sketches in +prose, his attempts at criticism, are not very weighty or +instructive. With all his limitations, however, he represents, in +company with M. Leconte de Lisle, the second of the three +generations of poets over whom Victor Hugo reigned. + +M. De Banville has been called, by people who do not like, and who +apparently have not read him, un saltimbanque litteraire (a literary +rope-dancer). Other critics, who do like him, but who have limited +their study to a certain portion of his books, compare him to a +worker in gold, who carefully chases or embosses dainty processions +of fauns and maenads. He is, in point of fact, something more +estimable than a literary rope-dancer, something more serious than a +working jeweller in rhymes. He calls himself un raffine; but he is +not, like many persons who are proud of that title, un indifferent +in matters of human fortune. His earlier poems, of course, are much +concerned with the matter of most early poems--with Lydia and +Cynthia and their light loves. The verses of his second period +often deal with the most evanescent subjects, and they now retain +but a slight petulance and sparkle, as of champagne that has been +too long drawn. In a prefatory plea for M. De Banville's poetry one +may add that he "has loved our people," and that no poet, no critic, +has honoured Shakespeare with brighter words of praise. + +Theodore de Banville was born at Moulin, on March 14th 1823, and he +is therefore three years younger than the dictionaries of biography +would make the world believe. He is the son of a naval officer, +and, according to M. Charles Baudelaire, a descendant of the +Crusaders. He came much too late into the world to distinguish +himself in the noisy exploits of 1830, and the chief event of his +youth was the publication of "Les Cariatides" in 1842. This first +volume contained a selection from the countless verses which the +poet produced between his sixteenth and his nineteenth year. +Whatever other merits the songs of minors may possess, they have +seldom that of permitting themselves to be read. "Les Cariatides" +are exceptional here. They are, above all things, readable. "On +peut les lire e peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He +admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) vers de +societe, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin +said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many +cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature +of that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of +Dorat, the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. +There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his +lifelong devotion to letters and to great men of letters-- +Shakespeare, Moliere, Homer, Victor Hugo. These are his gods; the +memory of them is his muse. His enthusiasm is worthy of one who, +though born too late to see and know the noble wildness of 1830, yet +lives on the recollections, and is strengthened by the example, of +that revival of letters. Whatever one may say of the renouveau, of +romanticism, with its affectations, the young men of 1830 were +sincere in their devotion to liberty, to poetry, to knowledge. One +can hardly find a more brilliant and touching belief in these great +causes than that of Edgar Quinet, as displayed in the letters of his +youth. De Banville fell on more evil times. + +When "Les Cariatides" was published poets had begun to keep an eye +on the Bourse, and artists dabbled in finance. The new volume of +song in the sordid age was a November primrose, and not unlike the +flower of Spring. There was a singular freshness and hopefulness in +the verse, a wonderful "certitude dans l'expression lyrique," as +Sainte-Beuve said. The mastery of musical speech and of various +forms of song was already to be recognised as the basis and the note +of the talent of De Banville. He had style, without which a man may +write very nice verses about heaven and hell and other matters, and +may please thousands of excellent people, but will write poetry-- +never. Comparing De Banville's boy's work with the boy's work of +Mr. Tennyson, one observes in each--"Les Cariatides" as in "The +Hesperides"--the timbre of a new voice. Poetry so fresh seems to +make us aware of some want which we had hardly recognised, but now +are sensible of, at the moment we find it satisfied. + +It is hardly necessary to say that this gratifying and welcome +strangeness, this lyric originality, is nearly all that M. De +Banville has in common with the English poet whose two priceless +volumes were published in the same year as "Les Cariatides?" The +melody of Mr. Tennyson's lines, the cloudy palaces of his +imagination, rose + + +"As Ilion, like a mist rose into towers," + + +when Apollo sang. The architecture was floating at first, and +confused; while the little theatre of M. De Banville's poetry, where +he sat piping to a dance of nixies, was brilliantly lit and elegant +with fresh paint and gilding. "The Cariatides" support the pediment +and roof of a theatre or temple in the Graeco-French style. The +poet proposed to himself + + +"A cote de Venus et du fils de Latone +Peindre la fee et la peri." + + +The longest poem in the book, and the most serious, "La Voie +Lactee," reminds one of the "Palace of Art," written before the +after-thought, before the "white-eyed corpses" were found lurking in +corners. Beginning with Homer, "the Ionian father of the rest," - + + +"Ce dieu, pere des dieux qu'adore Ionie," - + + +the poet glorifies all the chief names of song. There is a long +procession of illustrious shadows before Shakespeare comes-- +Shakespeare, whose genius includes them all. + + +"Toute creation e laquelle on aspire, +Tout reve, toute chose, emanent de Shakespeare." + + +His mind has lent colour to the flowers and the sky, to + + +"La fleur qui brode un point sur les manteau des plaines, +Les nenuphars penches, et les pales roseaux +Qui disent leur chant sombre au murmure des eaux." + + +One recognises more sincerity in this hymn to all poets, from +Orpheus to Heine, than in "Les Baisers de Pierre"--a clever +imitation of De Musset's stories in verse. Love of art and of the +masters of art, a passion for the figures of old mythology, which +had returned again after their exile in 1830, gaiety, and a revival +of the dexterity of Villon and Marot,--these things are the +characteristics of M. De Banville's genius, and all these were +displayed in "Les Cariatides." Already, too, his preoccupation with +the lighter and more fantastic sort of theatrical amusements shows +itself in lines like these: + + +"De son lit e baldaquin +Le soleil de son beau globe +Avait l'air d'un arlequin +Etalant sa garde-robe; + +"Et sa soeur au front changeant +Mademoiselle la Lune +Avec ses grands yeux d'argent +Regardait la terre brune." + + +The verse about "the sun in bed," unconsciously Miltonic, is in a +vein of bad taste which has always had seductions for M. De +Banville. He mars a fine later poem on Roncevaux and Roland by a +similar absurdity. The angel Michael is made to stride down the +steps of heaven four at a time, and M. De Banville fancies that this +sort of thing is like the simplicity of the ages of faith. + +In "Les Cariatides," especially in the poems styled "En Habit +Zinzolin," M. De Banville revived old measures--the rondeau and the +"poor little triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to +write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at +the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les +Cariatides" they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks +in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of +the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often +recalls Keats in his choice of classical themes. "Les Exiles," a +poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion." "Le Triomphe de +Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in "Endymion" - + + +"So many, and so many, and so gay." + + +There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De +Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse: + + +"Il reve e Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries, +Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies +La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal, +Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal." + + +The Bacchus of Titian has none of this Oriental languor, no memories +of perfumed places where "the throne of Indian Cama slowly sails." +One cannot help admiring the fancy which saw the conquering god +still steeped in Asiatic ease, still unawakened to more vigorous +passion by the fresh wind blowing from Thrace. Of all the +Olympians, Diana has been most often hymned by M. De Banville: his +imagination is haunted by the figure of the goddess. Now she is +manifest in her Hellenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, "taking her +pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild +wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad at +heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be known +where all are fair" (Odyssey, vi.). Again, Artemis appears more +thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean Goujon, touched with the +sadness of moonlight. Yet again, she is the weary and exiled spirit +that haunts the forest of Fontainebleau, and is a stranger among the +woodland folk, the fades and nixies. To this goddess, "being triple +in her divided deity," M. De Banville has written his hymn in the +characteristic form of the old French ballade. The translator may +borrow Chaucer's apology - + + +"And eke to me it is a grete penaunce, +Syth rhyme in English hath such scarsete +To folowe, word by word, the curiosite +Of Banville, flower of them that make in France." + + +"BALLADE SUR LES HOTES MYSTERIEUX DE LA FORET + +"Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old, +Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree; +The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold, +And still wolves dread Diana roving free, +In secret woodland with her company. +Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite +When now the wolds are bathed in silver light, +And first the moonrise breaks the dusky grey, +Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright, +And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. + +"With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold +The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; +Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold +Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, +The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy; +Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright, +The sudden goddess enters, tall and white, +With one long sigh for summers passed away; +The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright, +And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. + +"She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold +She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee, +Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled, +But her delight is all in archery, +And nought of ruth and pity wotteth she +More than the hounds that follow on the flight; +The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might, +And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay, +She tosses loose her locks upon the night, +And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way. + +ENVOI. + +"Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite, +The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight; +Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray +There is the mystic home of our delight, +And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way." + + +The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville's genius. Through his +throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of the ballet the cold Muse +sometimes passes, strange, but not unfriendly. He, for his part, +has never degraded the beautiful forms of old religion to make the +laughing-stock of fools. His little play, Diane au Bois, has grace, +and gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the +failings of immortals. "The gods are jealous exceedingly if any +goddess takes a mortal man to her paramour, as Demeter chose +Iasion." The least that mortal poets can do is to show the +Olympians an example of toleration. + +"Les Cariatides" have delayed us too long. They are wonderfully +varied, vigorous, and rich, and full of promise in many ways. The +promise has hardly been kept. There is more seriousness in "Les +Stalactites" (1846), it is true, but then there is less daring. +There is one morsel that must be quoted,--a fragment fashioned on +the air and the simple words that used to waken the musings of +George Sand when she was a child, dancing with the peasant children: + + +"Nous n'irons plus an bois: les lauries sont coupes, +Les amours des bassins, les naiades en groupe +Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux decoupes +Les flots silencieux qui coulaient de leur coupe, +Les lauriers sont coupes et le cerf aux abois +Tressaille au son du cor: nous n'irons plus au bois! +Ou des enfants joueurs riait la folle troupe +Parmi les lys d'argent aux pleurs du ciel trempes, +Voici l'herbe qu'on fauche et les lauriers qu'on coupe; +Nous n'irons plus au bois; les lauriers sont coupes." + + +In these days Banville, like Gerard de Nerval in earlier times, +RONSARDISED. The poem 'A la Font Georges,' full of the memories of +childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, is +written in a favourite metre of Ronsard's. Thus Ronsard says in his +lyrical version of five famous lines of Homer - + + +"La gresle ni la neige +N'ont tels lieux pour leur siege +Ne la foudre oncques le +Ne devala." + +(The snow, and wind, and hail +May never there prevail, +Nor thunderbolt doth fall, +Nor rain at all.) + + +De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its sad +emphatic cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his childish +memories: + + +"O champs pleins de silence, +Ou mon heureuse enfance +Avait des jours encor +Tout files d'or!" + +O ma vieille Font Georges, +Vers qui les rouges-gorges +Et le doux rossignol +Prenaient leur vol! + + +So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, "tout file d'or," and +closes when the dusk is washed with silver - + + +"A l'heure ou sous leurs voiles +Les tremblantes etoiles +Brodent le ciel changeant +De fleurs d'argent." + + +The "Stalactites" might detain one long, but we must pass on after +noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats' +"Ode to a Greek Urn": + + +"Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante, +La verveine, melee e des feuilles d'acanthe, +Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement +S'avancent deux e deux, d'un pas sur et charmant, +Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites +Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites." + + +In the same volume of the definite series of poems come "Les +Odelettes," charming lyrics, one of which, addressed to Theophile +Gautier, was answered in the well-known verses called "L'Art." If +there had been any rivalry between the writers, M. De Banville would +hardly have cared to print Gautier's "Odelette" beside his own. The +tone of it is infinitely more manly: one seems to hear a deep, +decisive voice replying to tones far less sweet and serious. M. De +Banville revenged himself nobly in later verses addressed to +Gautier, verses which criticise the genius of that workman better, +we think, than anything else that has been written of him in prose +or rhyme. + +The less serious poems of De Banville are, perhaps, the better known +in this country. His feats of graceful metrical gymnastics have +been admired by every one who cares for skill pure and simple. "Les +Odes Funambulesques" and "Les Occidentales" are like ornamental +skating. The author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred +fantastic figures with a perfect ease and smoothness. At the same +time, naturally, he does not advance nor carry his readers with him +in any direction. "Les Odes Funambulesques" were at first unsigned. +They appeared in journals and magazines, and, as M. de Banville +applied the utmost lyrical skill to light topics of the moment, they +were the most popular of "Articles de Paris." One must admit that +they bore the English reader, and by this time long scholia are +necessary for the enlightenment even of the Parisian student. The +verses are, perhaps, the "bird-chorus" of French life, but they have +not the permanent truth and delightfulness of the "bird-chorus" in +Aristophanes. One has easily too much of the Carnival, the masked +ball, the debardeurs, and the pierrots. The people at whom M. De +Banville laughed are dead and forgotten. There was a certain M. +Paul Limayrac of those days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and +other great men, in the Revue des Deux Mondes. In his honour De +Banville wrote a song which parodied all popular aspirations to be a +flower. M. Limayrac was supposed to have become a blossom: + + +"Sur les coteaux et dans les landes +Voltigeant comme un oiseleur +Buloz en ferait des guirlandes +Si Limayrac devenait fleur!" + + +There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which became +as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of battles. +It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in +the opera-house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The +turbulent waltz stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers +of every hue howled at the critic + + +"Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!" + + +Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and +imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of +letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town +thirty years ago, and the students were certain to be largely +represented at the ball. + +The "Odes Funambulesques" contain many examples of M. De Banville's +skill in reviving old forms of verse--triolets, rondeaux, chants +royaux, and ballades. Most of these were composed for the special +annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called +himself De Mirecourt. The rondeaux are full of puns in the refrain: +"Houssaye ou c'est; lyre, l'ire, lire," and so on, not very +exhilarating. The pantoum, where lines recur alternately, was +borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive pantoum, in which the +last two lines of each stanza are the first two of the next, occur +in old French folk-song. The popular trick of repetition, affording +a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all +refrains. De Banville's later satires are directed against +permanent objects of human indignation--the little French debauchee, +the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty chauviniste. +Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes back to +his youth - + +"Lorsque la levre de l'aurore +Baisait nos yeux souleves, +Et que nous n'etions pas encore +La France des petits creves." + + +The poem "Et Tartufe" prolongs the note of a satire always popular +in France--the satire of Scarron, Moliere, La Bruyere, against the +clerical curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe's +stronghold at the moment. "French interests" demanded that Italy +should be headless. + + +"Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux cremus +Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est e Rome, +Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus +Nous tetterons la louve e jamais--le pauvre homme." + + +The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be +forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the +morality of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is +addressed as she hovers above the Geneva Convention, - + + +"Quoi, nymphe du canon raye, +Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles +Et ce petit air effraye +Devant les balles exploisibles?" + + +De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom +from Weltschmerz, from regret and desire for worlds lost or +impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, +sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had +piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a +waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. "Le Sang +de la Coupe" contains a very powerful poem, "The Curse of Venus," +pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city +of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial +enterprise: + + +"Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin! +L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere; +La neige vierge est le pour fournir ta glaciere; +Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, +Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, +N'est plus bon qu'e tourner tes meules de moulin!" + + +In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his +highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less +impressive. The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of +ancient Gaul, remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the +decrepit Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's +"Hyperion." Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere le-bas dans +l'ile," is not forgotten: + + +"Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, +Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, +Et qui sembles sourire e l'ocean bruyant, +Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles." + + +The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one +struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over +poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and +impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing +Durendal, is rusted and broken, how victory is to him - + + +" . . . qui se cela +Dans un trou, sous la terre noire." + + +He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a +lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he +carried in his tunic. + +It is impossible to leave the poet of gaiety and good-humour in the +mood of the prisoner in besieged Paris. His "Trente Six Ballades +Joyeuses" make a far more pleasant subject for a last word. There +is scarcely a more delightful little volume in the French language +than this collection of verses in the most difficult of forms, which +pour forth, with absolute ease and fluency, notes of mirth, banter, +joy in the spring, in letters, art, and good-fellowship. + + +"L'oiselet retourne aux forets; +Je suis un poete lyrique," - + + +he cries, with a note like a bird's song. Among the thirty-six +every one will have his favourites. We venture to translate the +"Ballad de Banville": + + +"AUX ENFANTS PERDUS + +"I know Cythera long is desolate; +I know the winds have stripped the garden green. +Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight +A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, +Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! +So be it, for we seek a fabled shore, +To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, +To wander where Love's labyrinths, beguile; +There let us land, there dream for evermore: +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + +"The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, +If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene +We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate +Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. +Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen +That veils the fairy coast we would explore. +Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, +Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, +Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + +"Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate +Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, +And ruined is the palace of our state; +But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen +The shrill wind sings the silken cords between. +Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, +Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar. +Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile; +Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' + +ENVOI. + +"Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore. +All, singing birds, your happy music pour; +Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; +Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: +'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'" + + +Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the +summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial +time. + +It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. "Je ne +m'entends qu'e la meurique," he says in his ballad on himself; but +he can write prose when he pleases. + +It is in his drama of Gringoire acted at the Theatre Francais, and +familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De +Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping +with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. +Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire, +the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is +dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised +a good supper if he will recite the new satirical "Ballade des +Pendus," which he has made at the monarch's expense. Hunger +overcomes his timidity, and, addressing himself especially to the +king, he enters on this goodly matter: + + +"Where wide the forest boughs are spread, +Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, +Are crowns and garlands of men dead, +All golden in the morning gay; +Within this ancient garden grey +Are clusters such as no mail knows, +Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: +This is King Louis' orchard close! + +"These wretched folk wave overhead, +With such strange thoughts as none may say; +A moment still, then sudden sped, +They swing in a ring and waste away. +The morning smites them with her ray; +They toss with every breeze that blows, +They dance where fires of dawning play: +This is King Louis' orchard close! + +"All hanged and dead, they've summoned +(With Hell to aid, that hears them pray) +New legions of an army dread, +Now down the blue sky flames the day; +The dew dies off; the foul array +Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, +With wings that flap and beaks that flay: +This is King Louis' orchard close! + +ENVOI. + +"Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, +A tree of bitter clusters grows; +The bodies of men dead are they! +This is King Louis' orchard close! + + +Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is made to +recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he must join the +ghastly army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be allowed to +finish his supper. This the king grants, and in the end, after +Gringoire has won the heart of the heroine, he receives his life and +a fair bride with a full dowry. + +Gringoire is a play very different from M. De Banville's other +dramas, and it is not included in the pretty volume of "Comedies" +which closes the Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often +declared, with an iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin, +that "comedy is the child of the ode," and that a drama without the +"lyric" element is scarcely a drama at all. While comedy retains +either the choral ode in its strict form, or its representative in +the shape of lyric enthusiasm (le lyrisme), comedy is complete and +living. Gringoire, to our mind, has plenty of lyric enthusiasm; but +M. De Banville seems to be of a different opinion. His republished +"Comedies" are more remote from experience than Gringoire, his +characters are ideal creatures, familiar types of the stage, like +Scapin and "le beau Leandre," or ethereal persons, or figures of old +mythology, like Diana in Diane au Bois, and Deidamia in the piece +which shows Achilles among women. M. De Banville's dramas have +scarcely prose enough in them to suit the modern taste. They are +masques for the delicate diversion of an hour, and it is not in the +nature of things that they should rival the success of blatant +buffooneries. His earliest pieces--Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane +(acted at the Odeon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and Le Cousin du Roi (Odeon, +April 4th, 1857)--were written in collaboration with Philoxene +Boyer, a generous but indiscreet patron of singers. + + +"Dans les salons de Philoxene +Nous etions quatre-vingt rimeurs," + + +M. De Banville wrote, parodying the "quatre-vingt ramuers" of Victor +Hugo. The memory of M. Boyer's enthusiasm for poetry and his +amiable hospitality are not unlikely to survive both his +compositions and those in which M. De Banville aided him. The +latter poet began to walk alone as a playwright in Le Beau Leandre +(Vaudeville, 1856)--a piece with scarcely more substance than the +French scenes in the old Franco-Italian drama possess. We are taken +into an impossible world of gay non-morality, where a wicked old +bourgeois, Orgon, his daughter Colombine, a pretty flirt, and her +lover Leandre, a light-hearted scamp, bustle through their little +hour. Leandre, who has no notion of being married, says, "Le ciel +n'est pas plus pur que mes intentions." And the artless Colombine +replies, "Alors marions-nous!" To marry Colombine without a dowry +forms, as a modern novelist says, "no part of Leandre's profligate +scheme of pleasure." There is a sort of treble intrigue. Orgon +wants to give away Colombine dowerless, Leandre to escape from the +whole transaction, and Colombine to secure her dot and her husband. +The strength of the piece is the brisk action in the scene when +Leandre protests that he can't rob Orgon of his only daughter, and +Orgon insists that he can refuse nothing except his ducats to so +charming a son-in-law. The play is redeemed from sordidness by the +costumes. Leandre is dressed in the attire of Watteau's +"L'Indifferent" in the Louvre, and wears a diamond-hilted sword. +The lady who plays the part of Colombine may select (delightful +privilege!) the prettiest dress in Watteau's collection. + +This love of the glitter of the stage is very characteristic of De +Banville. In his Deidamie (Odeon, Nov. 18th, 1876) the players who +took the roles of Thetis, Achilles, Odysseus, Deidamia, and the +rest, were accoutred in semi-barbaric raiment and armour of the +period immediately preceding the Graeco-Phoenician (about the eighth +century B.C.). Again we notice the touch of pedantry in the poet. +As for the play, the sombre thread in it is lent by the certainty of +Achilles' early death, the fate which drives him from Deidamie's +arms, and from the sea king's isle to the leagues under the fatal +walls of Ilion. Of comic effect there is plenty, for the sisters of +Deidamie imitate all the acts by which Achilles is likely to betray +himself--grasp the sword among the insidious presents of Odysseus, +when he seizes the spear, and drink each one of them a huge beaker +of wine to the confusion of the Trojans. {1} On a Parisian audience +the imitations of the tone of the Odyssey must have been thrown +away. For example, here is a passage which is as near being Homeric +as French verse can be. Deidamie is speaking in a melancholy mood: + +"Heureux les epoux rois assis dans leur maison, +Qui voient tranquillement s'enfuir chaque saison - +L'epoux tenant son sceptre, environne de gloire, +Et l'epouse filant sa quenouille d'ivoire! +Mais le jeune heros que, la glaive e son franc! +Court dans le noir combat, les mains teintes de sang, +Laisse sa femme en pleurs dans sa haute demeure." + + +With the accustomed pedantry, M. De Banville, in the scene of the +banquet, makes the cup-bearer go round dealing out a little wine, +with which libation is made, and then the feast goes on in proper +Homeric fashion. These overwrought details are forgotten in the +parting scenes, where Deidamie takes what she knows to be her last +farewell of Achilles, and girds him with his sword: + + +"La lame de l'epee, en sa forme divine +Est pareille e la feuille austere du laurier!" + + +Let it be noted that each of M. De Banville's more serious plays +ends with the same scene, with slight differences. In Florise +(never put on the stage) the wandering actress of Hardy's troupe +leaves her lover, the young noble, and the shelter of his castle, to +follow where art and her genius beckon her. In Diane au Bois the +goddess "that leads the precise life" turns her back on Eros, who +has subdued even her, and passes from the scene as she waves her +hand in sign of a farewell ineffably mournful. Nearer tragedy than +this M. De Banville does not care to go; and if there is any deeper +tragedy in scenes of blood and in stages strewn with corpses, from +that he abstains. His Florise is perhaps too long, perhaps too +learned; and certainly we are asked to believe too much when a kind +of etherealised Consuelo is set before us as the prima donna of old +Hardy's troupe: + + +"Mais Florise n'est pas une femme. Je suis +L'harmonieuse voix que berce vos ennuis; +Je suis la lyre aux sons divers que le poete +Fait resonner et qui sans lui serait muette - +Une comedienne enfin. Je ne suis pas +Une femme." + + +An actress who was not a woman had little to do in the company of +Scarron's Angelique and Mademoiselle de l'Estoile. Florise, in +short, is somewhat too allegorical and haughty a creature; while +Colombine and Nerine (Vaudeville, June 1864) are rather tricksy imps +than women of flesh and blood. M. De Banville's stage, on the +whole, is one of glitter and fantasy; yet he is too much a Greek for +the age that appreciates "la belle Helene," too much a lyric +dramatist to please the contemporaries of Sardou; he lends too much +sentiment and dainty refinement to characters as flimsy as those of +Offenbach's drama. + +Like other French poets, M. De Banville has occasionally deigned to +write feuilletons and criticisms. Not many of these scattered +leaves are collected, but one volume, "La Mer de Nice" (Poulet- +Malassis et De Broise, Paris, 1861), may be read with pleasure even +by jealous admirers of Gautier's success as a chronicler of the +impressions made by southern scenery. + +To De Banville (he does not conceal it) a journey to a place so far +from Paris as the Riviera was no slight labour. Even from the +roses, the palms, the siren sea, the wells of water under the fronds +of maiden-hair fern, his mind travels back wistfully to the city of +his love. + +"I am, I have always been, one of those devotees of Paris who visit +Greece only when they gaze on the face, so fair and so terrible, of +the twice-victorious Venus of the Louvre. One of those obstinate +adorers of my town am I, who will never see Italy, save in the glass +that reflects the tawny hair of Titian's Violante, or in that dread +isle of Alcinous where Lionardo shows you the mountain peaks that +waver in the blue behind the mysterious Monna Lisa. But the Faculty +of Physicians, which has, I own, the right to be sceptical, does not +believe that neuralgia can be healed by the high sun which Titian +and Veronese have fixed on the canvas. To me the Faculty prescribes +the real sun of nature and of life; and here am I, condemned to +learn in suffering all that passes in the mind of a poet of Paris +exiled from that blessed place where he finds the Cyclades and the +islands blossoming, the vale of Avalon, and all the heavenly homes +of the fairies of experience and desire." + +Nice is Tomi to this Ovid, but he makes the best of it, and sends to +the editor of the Moniteur letters much more diverting than the +"Tristia." To tell the truth, he never overcomes his amazement at +being out of Paris streets, and in a glade of the lower Alps he +loves to be reminded of his dear city of pleasure. Only under the +olives of Monaco, those solemn and ancient trees, he feels what +surely all men feel who walk at sunset through their shadow--the +memory of a mysterious twilight of agony in an olive garden. + +"Et ceux-ci, les pales oliviers, n'est-ce pas de ces heures desolees +ou, comme torture supreme, le Sauveur acceptait en son ame +l'irreparable misere du doute, n'est-ce pas alors qu'il ont appris +de lui e courber le front sous le poids imperieux des souvenirs?" + +The pages which M. De Banville consecrates to the Villa Sardou, +where Rachel died, may disenchant, perhaps, some readers of Mr. +Matthew Arnold's sonnet. The scene of Rachel's death has been +spoiled by "improvements" in too theatrical taste. All these notes, +however, were made many years ago; and visitors of the Riviera, +though they will find the little book charming where it speaks of +seas and hills, will learn that France has greatly changed the city +which she has annexed. As a practical man and a Parisian, De +Banville has printed (pp. 179-81) a recipe for the concoction of the +Marseilles dish, bouillabaisse, the mess that Thackeray's ballad +made so famous. It takes genius, however, to cook bouillabaisse; +and, to parody what De Banville says about his own recipe for making +a mechanical "ballade," "en employment ce moyen, on est sur de faire +une mauvaise, irremediablement mauvaise bouillabaisse." The poet +adds the remark that "une bouillabaisse reussie vaut un sonnet sans +defaut." + +There remains one field of M. De Banville's activity to be shortly +described. Of his "Emaux Parisiens," short studies of celebrated +writers, we need say no more than that they are written in careful +prose. M. De Banville is not only a poet, but in his "Petit Traite +de Poesie Francaise" (Bibliotheque de l'Echo de la Sorbonne, s.d.) a +teacher of the mechanical part of poetry. He does not, of course, +advance a paradox like that of Baudelaire, "that poetry can be +taught in thirty lessons." He merely instructs his pupil in the +material part--the scansion, metres, and so on--of French poetry. +In this little work he introduces these "traditional forms of +verse," which once caused some talk in England: the rondel, +rondeau, ballade, villanelle, and chant royal. It may be worth +while to quote his testimony as to the merit of these modes of +expression. "This cluster of forms is one of our most precious +treasures, for each of them forms a rhythmic whole, complete and +perfect, while at the same time they all possess the fresh and +unconscious grace which marks the productions of primitive times." +Now, there is some truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of +man's early ingenuity, in many arts, to seek complexity (where you +would expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an +infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early +decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the +complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as early, +and even savage, races are our masters in the decorative use of +colour and of carving, so the nameless master-singers of ancient +France may be our teachers in decorative poetry, the poetry some +call vers de societe. Whether it is possible to go beyond this, and +adapt the old French forms to serious modern poetry, it is not for +any one but time to decide. In this matter, as in greater affairs, +securus judicat orbis terrarum. For my own part I scarcely believe +that the revival would serve the nobler ends of English poetry. Now +let us listen again to De Banville. + +"In the rondel, as in the rondeau and the ballade, all the art is to +bring in the refrain without effort, naturally, gaily, and each time +with novel effect and with fresh light cast on the central idea." +Now, you can TEACH no one to do that, and M. De Banville never +pretends to give any recipes for cooking rondels or ballades worth +reading. "Without poetic VISION all is mere marquetery and cabinet- +maker's work: that is, so far as poetry is concerned--nothing." It +is because he was a poet, not a mere craftsman, that Villon was and +remains the king, the absolute master, of ballad-land." About the +rondeau, M. De Banville avers that it possesses "nimble movement, +speed, grace, lightness of touch, and, as it were, an ancient +fragrance of the soil, that must charm all who love our country and +our country's poetry, in its every age." As for the villanelle, M. +De Banville declares that it is the fairest jewel in the casket of +the muse Erato; while the chant royal is a kind of fossil poem, a +relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished. "The kings +and the gods are dead," like Pan; or at least we no longer find them +able, by touch royal or divine, to reanimate the magnificent chant +royal. + +This is M. De Banville's apology in pro lyra sua, that light lyre of +many tones, in whose jingle the eternal note of modern sadness is +heard so rarely. If he has a lesson to teach English versifiers, +surely it is a lesson of gaiety. They are only too fond of rue and +rosemary, and now and then prefer the cypress to the bay. M. De +Banville's muse is content to wear roses in her locks, and perhaps +may retain, for many years, a laurel leaf from the ancient laurel +tree which once sheltered the poet at Turbia. + + + +HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK + + + +The Greek language is being ousted from education, here, in France, +and in America. The speech of the earliest democracies is not +democratic enough for modern anarchy. There is nothing to be +gained, it is said, by a knowledge of Greek. We have not to fight +the battle of life with Hellenic waiters; and, even if we had, +Romaic, or modern Greek, is much more easily learned than the old +classical tongue. The reason of this comparative ease will be plain +to any one who, retaining a vague memory of his Greek grammar, takes +up a modern Greek newspaper. He will find that the idioms of the +modern newspaper are the idioms of all newspapers, that the grammar +is the grammar of modern languages, that the opinions are expressed +in barbarous translations of barbarous French and English +journalistic cliches or commonplaces. This ugly and undignified +mixture of the ancient Greek characters, and of ancient Greek words +with modern grammar and idioms, and stereotyped phrases, is +extremely distasteful to the scholar. Modern Greek, as it is at +present printed, is not the natural spoken language of the peasants. +You can read a Greek leading article, though you can hardly make +sense of a Greek rural ballad. The peasant speech is a thing of +slow development; there is a basis of ancient Greek in it, with +large elements of Slavonic, Turkish, Italian, and other imposed or +imported languages. Modern literary Greek is a hybrid of revived +classical words, blended with the idioms of the speeches which have +arisen since the fall of the Roman Empire. Thus, thanks to the +modern and familiar element in it, modern Greek "as she is writ" is +much more easily learned than ancient Greek. Consequently, if any +one has need for the speech in business or travel, he can acquire as +much of it as most of us have of French, with considerable ease. +People therefore argue that ancient Greek is particularly +superfluous in schools. Why waste time on it, they ask, which could +be expended on science, on modern languages, or any other branch of +education? There is a great deal of justice in this position. The +generation of men who are now middle-aged bestowed much time and +labour on Greek; and in what, it may be asked, are they better for +it? Very few of them "keep up their Greek." Say, for example, that +one was in a form with fifty boys who began the study--it is odds +against five of the survivors still reading Greek books. The +worldly advantages of the study are slight: it may lead three of +the fifty to a good degree, and one to a fellowship; but good +degrees may be taken in other subjects, and fellowships may be +abolished, or "nationalised," with all other forms of property. + +Then, why maintain Greek in schools? Only a very minute percentage +of the boys who are tormented with it really learn it. Only a still +smaller percentage can read it after they are thirty. Only one or +two gain any material advantage by it. In very truth, most minds +are not framed by nature to excel and to delight in literature, and +only to such minds and to schoolmasters is Greek valuable. + +This is the case against Greek put as powerfully as one can state +it. On the other side, we may say, though the remark may seem +absurd at first sight, that to have mastered Greek, even if you +forget it, is not to have wasted time. It really is an educational +and mental discipline. The study is so severe that it needs the +earnest application of the mind. The study is averse to indolent +intellectual ways; it will not put up with a "there or thereabouts," +any more than mathematical ideas admit of being made to seem +"extremely plausible." He who writes, and who may venture to offer +himself as an example, is naturally of a most slovenly and +slatternly mental habit. It is his constant temptation to "scamp" +every kind of work, and to say "it will do well enough." He hates +taking trouble and verifying references. And he can honestly +confess that nothing in his experience has so helped, in a certain +degree, to counteract those tendencies--as the labour of thoroughly +learning certain Greek texts--the dramatists, Thucydides, some of +the books of Aristotle. Experience has satisfied him that Greek is +of real educational value, and, apart from the acknowledged and +unsurpassed merit of its literature, is a severe and logical +training of the mind. The mental constitution is strengthened and +braced by the labour, even if the language is forgotten in later +life. + +It is manifest, however, that this part of education is not for +everybody. The real educational problem is to discover what boys +Greek will be good for, and what boys will only waste time and +dawdle over it. Certainly to men of a literary turn (a very minute +percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, +may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and +Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted +his ignorance; Scott regretted it. We know not how much Scott's +admitted laxity of style and hurried careless habit might have been +modified by a knowledge of Greek; how much of grace, permanence, and +generally of art, his genius might have gained from the language and +literature of Hellas. The most Homeric of modern men could not read +Homer. As for Keats, he was born a Greek, it has been said; but had +he been born with a knowledge of Greek, he never, probably, would +have been guilty of his chief literary faults. This is not certain, +for some modern men of letters deeply read in Greek have all the +qualities of fustian and effusiveness which Longinus most despised. +Greek will not make a luxuriously Asiatic mind Hellenic, it is +certain; but it may, at least, help to restrain effusive and +rhetorical gabble. Our Asiatic rhetoricians might perhaps be even +more barbarous than they are if Greek were a sealed book to them. +However this may be, it is, at least, well to find out in a school +what boys are worth instructing in the Greek language. Now, of +their worthiness, of their chances of success in the study, Homer +seems the best touchstone; and he is certainly the most attractive +guide to the study. + +At present boys are introduced to the language of the Muses by +pedantically written grammars, full of the queerest and most arid +metaphysical and philological verbiage. The very English in which +these deplorable books are composed may be scientific, may be +comprehensible by and useful to philologists, but is utterly heart- +breaking to boys. + +Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a word, and of +the processes by which its different forms, in different senses, +were developed, might be made as interesting as any other story of +events. But grammar is not taught thus: boys are introduced to a +jargon about matters meaningless, and they are naturally as much +enchanted as if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans in +vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. +They have to learn the buzz by rote; and a pleasant process that is- +-a seductive initiation into the mysteries. When they struggle so +far as to be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, they are +only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: she once had a +sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating how he marched so many +parasangs and took breakfast, do not amount to more than a very +unrefreshing sip of Greek. Nobody even tells the boys who Xenophon +was, what he did there, and what it was all about. Nobody gives a +brief and interesting sketch of the great march, of its history and +objects. The boys straggle along with Xenophon, knowing not whence +or whither: + + +"They stray through a desolate region, +And often are faint on the march." + + +One by one they fall out of the ranks; they mutiny against Xenophon; +they murmur against that commander; they desert his flag. They +determine that anything is better than Greek, that nothing can be +worse than Greek, and they move the tender hearts of their parents. +They are put to learn German; which they do not learn, unluckily, +but which they find it comparatively easy to shirk. In brief, they +leave school without having learned anything whatever. + +Up to a certain age my experiences at school were precisely those +which I have described. Our grammar was not so philological, +abstruse and arid as the instruments of torture employed at present. +But I hated Greek with a deadly and sickening hatred; I hated it +like a bully and a thief of time. The verbs in [Greek text] +completed my intellectual discomfiture, and Xenophon routed me with +horrible carnage. I could have run away to sea, but for a strong +impression that a life on the ocean wave "did not set my genius," as +Alan Breck says. Then we began to read Homer; and from the very +first words, in which the Muse is asked to sing the wrath of +Achilles, Peleus' son, my mind was altered, and I was the devoted +friend of Greek. Here was something worth reading about; here one +knew where one was; here was the music of words, here were poetry, +pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a teacher (Dr. Hodson) who +was not wildly enthusiastic about grammar. He would set us long +pieces of the Iliad or Odyssey to learn, and, when the day's task +was done, would make us read on, adventuring ourselves in "the +unseen," and construing as gallantly as we might, without grammar or +dictionary. On the following day we surveyed more carefully the +ground we had pioneered or skirmished over, and then advanced again. +Thus, to change the metaphor, we took Homer in large draughts, not +in sips: in sips no epic can be enjoyed. We now revelled in Homer +like Keats in Spenser, like young horses let loose in a pasture. +The result was not the making of many accurate scholars, though a +few were made; others got nothing better than enjoyment in their +work, and the firm belief, opposed to that of most schoolboys, that +the ancients did not write nonsense. To love Homer, as Steele said +about loving a fair lady of quality, "is a liberal education." + +Judging from this example, I venture very humbly to think that any +one who, even at the age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, should begin +where Greek literature, where all profane literature begins--with +Homer himself. It was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that the +great scholars of the Renaissance began. It was thus that Ascham +and Rabelais began, by jumping into Greek and splashing about till +they learned to swim. First, of course, a person must learn the +Greek characters. Then his or her tutor may make him read a dozen +lines of Homer, marking the cadence, the surge and thunder of the +hexameters--a music which, like that of the Sirens, few can hear +without being lured to the seas and isles of song. Then the tutor +might translate a passage of moving interest, like Priam's appeal to +Achilles; first, of course, explaining the situation. Then the +teacher might go over some lines, minutely pointing out how the +Greek words are etymologically connected with many words in English. +Next, he might take a substantive and a verb, showing roughly how +their inflections arose and were developed, and how they retain +forms in Homer which do not occur in later Greek. There is no +reason why even this part of the lesson should be uninteresting. By +this time a pupil would know, more or less, where he was, what Greek +is, and what the Homeric poems are like. He might thus believe from +the first that there are good reasons for knowing Greek; that it is +the key to many worlds of life, of action, of beauty, of +contemplation, of knowledge. Then, after a few more exercises in +Homer, the grammar being judiciously worked in along with the +literature of the epic, a teacher might discern whether it was worth +while for his pupils to continue in the study of Greek. Homer would +be their guide into the "realms of gold." + +It is clear enough that Homer is the best guide. His is the oldest +extant Greek, his matter is the most various and delightful, and +most appeals to the young, who are wearied by scraps of Xenophon, +and who cannot be expected to understand the Tragedians. But Homer +is a poet for all ages, all races, and all moods. To the Greeks the +epics were not only the best of romances, the richest of poetry; not +only their oldest documents about their own history,--they were also +their Bible, their treasury of religious traditions and moral +teaching. With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the +best training for life. There is no good quality that they lack: +manliness, courage, reverence for old age and for the hospitable +hearth; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude towards life and +death, are all conspicuous in Homer. He has to write of battles; +and he delights in the joy of battle, and in all the movement of +war. Yet he delights not less, but more, in peace: in prosperous +cities, hearths secure, in the tender beauty of children, in the +love of wedded wives, in the frank nobility of maidens, in the +beauty of earth and sky and sea, and seaward murmuring river, in sun +and snow, frost and mist and rain, in the whispered talk of boy and +girl beneath oak and pine tree. + +Living in an age where every man was a warrior, where every city +might know the worst of sack and fire, where the noblest ladies +might be led away for slaves, to light the fire and make the bed of +a foreign master, Homer inevitably regards life as a battle. To +each man on earth comes "the wicked day of destiny," as Malory +unconsciously translates it, and each man must face it as hardily as +he may. + +Homer encourages them by all the maxims of chivalry and honour. His +heart is with the brave of either side--with Glaucus and Sarpedon of +Lycia no less than with Achilles and Patroclus. "Ah, friend," cries +Sarpedon, "if once escaped from this battle we were for ever to be +ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight now in the +foremost ranks, nor would I urge thee into the wars that give +renown; but now--for assuredly ten thousand fates of death on every +side beset us, and these may no man shun, nor none avoid--forward +now let us go, whether we are to give glory or to win it!" And +forth they go, to give and take renown and death, all the shields +and helms of Lycia shining behind them, through the dust of battle, +the singing of the arrows, the hurtling of spears, the rain of +stones from the Locrian slings. And shields are smitten, and +chariot-horses run wild with no man to drive them, and Sarpedon +drags down a portion of the Achaean battlement, and Aias leaps into +the trench with his deadly spear, and the whole battle shifts and +shines beneath the sun. Yet he who sings of the war, and sees it +with his sightless eyes, sees also the Trojan women working at the +loom, cheating their anxious hearts with broidery work of gold and +scarlet, or raising the song to Athene, or heating the bath for +Hector, who never again may pass within the gates of Troy. He sees +the poor weaving woman, weighing the wool, that she may not defraud +her employers, and yet may win bread for her children. He sees the +children, the golden head of Astyanax, his shrinking from the +splendour of the hero's helm. He sees the child Odysseus, going +with his father through the orchard, and choosing out some apple +trees "for his very own." It is in the mouth of the ruthless +Achilles, the fatal, the fated, the swift-footed hero with the hands +of death, that Homer places the tenderest of his similes. +"Wherefore weepest thou, Patroclus, like a fond little maid, that +runs by her mother's side, praying her mother to take her up, +snatching at her gown, and hindering her as she walks, and tearfully +looking at her till her mother takes her up?--like her, Patroclus, +dost thou softly weep." + +This is what Chesterfield calls "the porter-like language of Homer's +heroes." Such are the moods of Homer, so full of love of life and +all things living, so rich in all human sympathies, so readily moved +when the great hound Argus welcomes his master, whom none knew after +twenty years, but the hound knew him, and died in that welcome. +With all this love of the real, which makes him dwell so fondly on +every detail of armour, of implement, of art; on the divers-coloured +gold-work of the shield, on the making of tires for chariot-wheels, +on the forging of iron, on the rose-tinted ivory of the Sidonians, +on cooking and eating and sacrificing, on pet dogs, on wasps and +their ways, on fishing, on the boar hunt, on scenes in baths where +fair maidens lave water over the heroes, on undiscovered isles with +good harbours and rich land, on ploughing, mowing, and sowing, on +the furniture of houses, on the golden vases wherein the white dust +of the dead is laid,--with all this delight in the real, Homer is +the most romantic of poets. He walks with the surest foot in the +darkling realm of dread Persephone, beneath the poplars on the +solemn last beach of Ocean. He has heard the Siren's music, and the +song of Circe, chanting as she walks to and fro, casting the golden +shuttle through the loom of gold. He enters the cave of the Man +Eater; he knows the unsunned land of the Cimmerians; in the summer +of the North he has looked, from the fiord of the Laestrygons, on +the Midnight Sun. He has dwelt on the floating isle of AEolus, with +its wall of bronze unbroken, and has sailed on those Phaeacian barks +that need no help of helm or oar, that fear no stress either of wind +or tide, that come and go and return obedient to a thought and +silent as a dream. He has seen the four maidens of Circe, daughters +of wells and woods, and of sacred streams. He is the second-sighted +man, and beholds the shroud that wraps the living who are doomed, +and the mystic dripping from the walls of blood yet unshed. He has +walked in the garden closes of Phaeacia, and looked on the face of +gods who fare thither, and watch the weaving of the dance. He has +eaten the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, and from the hand of Helen +he brings us that Egyptian nepenthe which puts all sorrow out of +mind. His real world is as real as that in Henry V., his enchanted +isles are charmed with the magic of the Tempest. His young wooers +are as insolent as Claudio, as flushed with youth; his beggar-men +are brethren of Edie Ochiltree; his Nausicaa is sister to Rosalind, +with a different charm of stately purity in love. His enchantresses +hold us yet with their sorceries; his Helen is very Beauty: she has +all the sweetness of ideal womanhood, and her repentance is without +remorse. His Achilles is youth itself, glorious, cruel, pitiful, +splendid, and sad, ardent and loving, and conscious of its doom. +Homer, in truth, is to be matched only with Shakespeare, and of +Shakespeare he has not the occasional wilfulness, freakishness, and +modish obscurity. He is a poet all of gold, universal as humanity, +simple as childhood, musical now as the flow of his own rivers, now +as the heavy plunging wave of his own Ocean. + +Such, then, as far as weak words can speak of him, is the first and +greatest of poets. This is he whom English boys are to be ignorant +of, if Greek be ousted from our schools, or are to know only in the +distorting mirror of a versified, or in the pale shadow of a prose +translation. Translations are good only as teachers to bring men to +Homer. English verse has no measure which even remotely suggests +the various flow of the hexameter. Translators who employ verse +give us a feeble Homer, dashed with their own conceits, and moulded +to their own style. Translators who employ prose "tell the story +without the song," but, at least, they add no twopenny "beauties" +and cheap conceits of their own. + +I venture to offer a few examples of original translation, in which +the mannerisms of poets who have, or have not, translated Homer, are +parodied, and, of course (except in the case of Pope), exaggerated. +The passage is the speech of the Second-sighted Man, before the +slaying of the wooers in the hall:- + + +"Ah! wretched men, what ill is this ye suffer? In night are swathed +your heads, your faces, your knees; and the voice of wailing is +kindled, and cheeks are wet with tears, and with blood drip the +walls, and the fair main beams of the roof, and the porch is full of +shadows, and full is the courtyard, of ghosts that hasten hellward +below the darkness, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an +evil mist sweeps up over all." + + +So much for Homer. The first attempt at metric translation here +given is meant to be in the manner of Pope: + + +"Caitiffs!" he cried, "what heaven-directed blight +Involves each countenance with clouds of night! +What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews! +Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze? +The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom +Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom; +In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head, +And sable mist creeps upward from the dead." + + +This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a translation +could possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome and Fenton, managed to +be much less Homeric, much more absurd, and infinitely more +"classical" in the sense in which Pope is classical: + + +"O race to death devote! with Stygian shade +Each destined peer impending fates invade; +With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned; +With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round: +Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts, +To people Orcus and the burning coasts! +Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll, +But universal night usurps the pole." + + +Who could have conjectured that even Pope would wander away so far +from his matchless original? "Wretches!" cries Theoclymenus, the +seer; and that becomes, "O race to death devote!" "Your heads are +swathed in night," turns into "With Stygian shade each destined +peer" (peer is good!) "impending fates invade," where Homer says +nothing about Styx nor peers. The Latin Orcus takes the place of +Erebus, and "the burning coasts" are derived from modern popular +theology. The very grammar detains or defies the reader; is it the +sun that does not give his golden orb to roll, or who, or what? + +The only place where the latter-day Broome or Fenton can flatter +himself that he rivals Pope at his own game is - + + +"What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews!" + + +This is, if possible, MORE classical than Pope's own - + + +"With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned." + + +But Pope nobly revindicates his unparalleled power of translating +funnily, when, in place of "the walls drip with blood," he writes - + + +"With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round." + + +Homer does not appear to have been acquainted with rubies; but what +of that? And how noble, how eminently worthy of Pope it is to add +that the ghosts "howl"! I tried to make them gibber, but ghosts DO +gibber in Homer (though not in this passage), so Pope, Fenton, +Broome, and Co., make them howl. + +No, Pope is not lightly to be rivalled by a modern translator. The +following example, a far-off following of a noted contemporary poet, +may be left unsigned - + + +"Wretches, the bane hath befallen, the night and the blight of your +sin +Sweeps like a shroud o'er the faces and limbs that were gladsome +therein; +And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all men +are wet, +And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the +gateway are met, +Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered, Hell opens her +lips, +And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, and sickens in spasm of +eclipse." + + +The next is longer and slower: the poet has a difficulty in telling +his story: + + +"Wretches," he cried, "what doom is this? what night +Clings like a face-cloth to the face of each, - +Sweeps like a shroud o'er knees and head? for lo! +The windy wail of death is up, and tears +On every cheek are wet; each shining wall +And beauteous interspace of beam and beam +Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door +Flicker, and fill the portals and the court - +Shadows of men that hellwards yearn--and now +The sun himself hath perished out of heaven, +And all the land is darkened with a mist." + + +That could never be mistaken for a version by the Laureate, as +perhaps any contemporary hack's works might have been taken for +Pope's. The difficulty, perhaps, lies here: any one knows where to +have Pope, any one knows that he will evade the mot propre, though +the precise evasion he may select is hard to guess. But the +Laureate would keep close to his text, and yet would write like +himself, very beautifully, but not with an Homeric swiftness and +strength. Who is to imitate him? As to Mr. William Morris, he +might be fabled to render [Greek text] "niddering wights," but +beyond that, conjecture is baffled. {2} Or is THIS the kind of +thing? - + + +"Niddering wights, what a bane do ye bear, for your knees in the +night, +And your heads and your faces, are shrouded, and clamour that knows +not delight +Rings, and your cheeks are begrutten, and blood is besprent on the +walls, +Blood on the tapestry fair woven, and barrow-wights walk in the +halls. +Fetches and wraiths of the chosen of the Norns, and the sun from the +lift +Shudders, and over the midgarth and swan's bath the cloud-shadows +drift." + + +It may be argued that, though this is perhaps a translation, it is +not English, never was, and never will be. But it is quite as like +Homer as the performance of Pope. + +Such as these, or not so very much better than these as might be +wished, are our efforts to translate Homer. From Chapman to Avia, +or Mr. William Morris, they are all eminently conscientious, and +erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, +obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope +makes him a wit, spirited, occasionally noble, full of points, and +epigrams, and queer rococo conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, +lumbering, a Milton without the music. Maginn makes him pipe an +Irish jig:- + + +"Scarcely had she begun to wash +When she was aware of the grisly gash!" + + +Lord Derby makes him respectable and ponderous. Lord Tennyson makes +him not less, but certainly not more, than Tennysonian. Homer, in +the Laureate's few fragments of experiment, is still a poet, but he +is not Homer. Mr. Morris, and Avia, make him Icelandic, and +archaistic, and hard to scan, though vigorous in his fetters for all +that. Bohn makes him a crib; and of other translators in prose it +has been said, with a humour which one of them appreciates, that +they render Homer into a likeness of the Book of Mormon. + +Homer is untranslatable. None of us can bend the bow of Eurytus, +and make the bow-string "ring sweetly at the touch, like the +swallow's song." The adventure is never to be achieved; and, if +Greek is to be dismissed from education, not the least of the +sorrows that will ensue is English ignorance of Homer. + + + +THE LAST FASHIONABLE NOVEL + + + +The editor of a great American newspaper once offered the author of +these lines a commission to explore a lost country, the seat of a +fallen and forgotten civilisation. It was not in Yucatan, or +Central Africa, or Thibet, or Kafiristan, this desolate region, once +so popular, so gaudy, so much frequented and desired. It was only +the fashionable novels of the Forties, say from 1835 to 1850, that I +was requested to examine and report upon. But I shrank from the +colossal task. I am no Mr. Stanley; and the length, the +difficulties, the arduousness of the labour appalled me. Besides, I +do not know where that land lies, the land of the old Fashionable +Novel, the Kor of which Thackeray's Lady Fanny Flummery is the +Ayesha. What were the names of the old novels, and who were the +authors, and in the circulating library of what undiscoverable +watering-place are they to be found? We have heard of Mrs. Gore, we +have heard of Tremayne, and Emilia Wyndham, and the Bachelor of the +Albany; and many of us have read Pelham, or know him out of +Carlyle's art, and those great curses which he spoke. But who was +the original, or who were the originals, that sat for the portrait +of the "Fashionable Authoress," Lady Fanny Flummery? and of what +work is Lords and Liveries a parody? The author is also credited +with Dukes and Dejeuners, Marchionesses and Milliners, etc. Could, +any candidate in a literary examination name the prototypes? "Let +mantua-makers puff her, but not men," says Thackeray, speaking of +Lady Fanny Flummery, "and the Fashionable Authoress is no more. +Blessed, blessed thought! No more fiddle-faddle novels! When will +you arrive, O happy Golden Age!" + +Well, it has arrived, though we are none the happier for all that. +The Fashionable Novel has ceased to exist, and the place of the +fashionable authoress knows her no more. Thackeray plainly detested +Lady Fanny. He writes about her, her books, her critics, her +successes, with a certain bitterness. Can it be possible that a +world which rather neglected Barry Lyndon was devoted to +Marchionesses and Milliners? Lady Fanny is represented as having +editors and reviewers at her feet; she sits among the flowers, like +the Sirens, and around her are the bones of critics corrupt in +death. She is puffed for the sake of her bouquets, her dinners, her +affabilities and condescensions. She gives a reviewer a great +garnet pin, adorned wherewith he paces the town. Her adorers +compare her to "him who sleeps by Avon." In one of Mr. Black's +novels there is a lady of this kind, who captivates the tribe of +"Log Rollers," as Mr. Black calls them. This lady appears to myself +to be a quite impossible She. One has never met her with her wiles, +nor come across her track, even, and seen the bodies and the bones +of those who perished in puffing her. Some persons of rank and +fashion have a taste for the society of some men of letters, but +nothing in the way of literary puffery seems to come of it. Of +course many critics like to give their friends and acquaintances an +applausive hand, and among their acquaintances may be ladies of +fashion who write novels; but we read nowhere such extraordinary +adulations as Augustus Timson bestowed on Lady Fanny. The +fashionable authoress is nearly extinct, though some persons write +well albeit they are fashionable. The fashionable novel is as dead +as a door nail: Lothair was nearly the last of the species. There +are novelists who write about "Society," to be sure, like Mr. +Norris; but their tone is quite different. They do not speak as if +Dukes and Earls were some strange superior kind of beings; their +manner is that of men accustomed to and undazzled by Earls, writing +for readers who do not care whether the hero is a lord or a +commoner. They are "at ease," though not terribly "in Zion." +Thackeray himself introduces plenty of the peerage, but it cannot be +said that he is always at ease in their society. He remembers that +they are lords, and is on his guard, very often, and suspicious and +sarcastic, except, perhaps when he deals with a gentleman like Lord +Kew. He examines them like curious wild animals in the Jardin des +Plantes. He is an accomplished naturalist, and not afraid of the +lion; but he remembers that the animal is royal, and has a title. +Mr. Norris, for instance, shows nothing of this mood. Mr. Trollope +was not afraid of his Dukes: he thought none the worse of a man +because he was the high and puissant prince of Omnium. As for most +novelists, they no longer paint fashionable society with enthusiasm. +Mr. Henry James has remarked that young British peers favour the +word "beastly,"--a point which does not always impress itself into +other people so keenly as into Mr. Henry James. In reading him you +do not forget that his Tufts are Tufts. But then Tufts are really +strange animals to the denizens of the Great Republic. Perhaps the +modern realism has made novelists desert the world where Dukes and +Dowagers abound. Novelists do not know very much about it; they are +not wont to haunt the gilded saloons, and they prefer to write about +the manners which they know. A very good novel, in these strange +ruinous times, might be written with a Duke for hero; but nobody +writes it, and, if anybody did write it in the modern manner, it +would not in the least resemble the old fashionable novel. + +Here a curious point arises. We have all studied the ingenious lady +who calls herself Ouida. Now, is Ouida, or rather was Ouida in her +early state sublime, the last of the old fashionable novelists, or +did Thackeray unconsciously prophesy of her when he wrote his +burlesque Lords and Liveries? Think of the young earl of Bagnigge, +"who was never heard to admire anything except a coulis de +dindonneau e la St. Menehould, . . . or the bouquet of a flask of +Medoc, of Carbonnell's best quality, or a goutte of Marasquin, from +the cellars of Briggs and Hobson." We have met such young +patricians in Under Two Flags and Idalia. But then there is a +difference: Ouida never tells us that her hero was "blest with a +mother of excellent principles, who had imbued his young mind with +that morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps of the +world." But a hero of Ouida's might easily have had a father who +"was struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay +of Fundy." The heroes themselves may have "looked at the Pyramids +without awe, at the Alps without reverence." They do say "Corpo di +Bacco," and the Duca de Montepulciano does reply, "E' bellissima +certamente." And their creator might conceivably remark "Non cuivis +contigit." But Lady Fanny Flummery's ladies could not dress as +Ouida's ladies do: they could not quote Petronius Arbiter; they had +never heard of Suetonius. No age reproduces itself. There is much +of our old fashionable authoress in Ouida's earlier tales; there is +plenty of the Peerage, plenty of queer French in old novels and +Latin yet more queer; but where is the elan which takes archaeology +with a rush, which sticks at no adventure, however nobly incredible? +where is the pathos, the simplicity, the purple splendour of Ouida's +manner, or manners? No, the spirit of the world, mirroring itself +in the minds of individuals, simpered, and that simper was Lady +Fanny Flummery. But it did many things more portentous than +simpering, when it reflected itself in Ouida. + +Is it that we do no longer gape on the aristocracy admiringly, and +write of them curiously, as if they were creatures in a Paradise? +Is it that Thackeray has converted us? In part, surely, we are just +as snobbish as ever, though the gods of our adoration totter to +their fall, and "a hideous hum" from the mob outside thrills through +the temples. In fiction, on the other hand, the world of fashion is +"played out." Nobody cares to read or write about the dear duchess. +If a peer comes into a novel he comes in, not as a coroneted +curiosity, but as a man, just as if he were a dentist, or a +stockbroker. His rank is an accident; it used to be the essence of +his luminous apparition. I scarce remember a lord in all the many +works of Mr. Besant, nor do they people the romances of Mr. Black. +Mr. Kipling does not deal in them, nor Mr. George Meredith much; Mr. +Haggard hardly gets beyond a baronet, and HE wears chain mail in +Central Africa, and tools with an axe. Mrs. Oliphant has a Scotch +peer, but he is less interesting and prominent than his family +ghost. No, we have only Ouida left, and Mr. Norris--who writes +about people of fashion, indeed, but who has nothing in him of the +old fashionable novelist. + +Is it to a Republic, to France, that we must look for our +fashionable novels--to France and to America. Every third person in +M. Guy de Maupassant's tales has a "de," and is a Marquis or a +Vicomte. As for M. Paul Bourget, one really can be happy with him +in the fearless old fashion. With him we meet Lord Henry Bohun, and +M. De Casal (a Vicomte), and all the Marquises and Marquises; and +all the pale blue boudoirs, and sentimental Duchesses, whose hearts +are only too good, and who get into the most complicated amorous +scrapes. That young Republican, M. Bourget, sincerely loves a +blason, a pedigree, diamonds, lace, silver dressing cases, silver +baths, essences, pomatums, le grand luxe. So does Gyp: apart from +her wit, Gyp is delightful to read, introducing us to the very best +of bad company. Even M. Fortune du Boisgobey likes a Vicomte, and +is partial to the noblesse, while M. Georges Ohnet is accused of +entering the golden world of rank, like a man without a wedding +garment, and of being lost and at sea among his aristocrats. They +order these things better in France: they still appeal to the fine +old natural taste for rank and luxury, splendour and refinement. +What is Gyp but a Lady Fanny Flummery reussie,--Lady Fanny with the +trifling additional qualities of wit and daring? Observe her noble +scorn of M. George Ohnet: it is a fashionable arrogance. + +To my mind, I confess, the decay of the British fashionable novel +seems one of the most threatening signs of the times. Even in +France institutions are much more permanent than here. In France +they have fashionable novels, and very good novels too: no man of +sense will deny that they are far better than our dilettantism of +the slums, or our religious and social tracts in the disguise of +romance. If there is no new tale of treasure and bandits and fights +and lions handy, may I have a fashionable novel in French to fall +back upon! Even Count Tolstoi does not disdain the genre. There is +some uncommonly high life in Anna Karenine. He adds a great deal of +psychology, to be sure; so does M. Paul Bourget. But he takes you +among smart people, who have everything handsome about them--titles, +and lands, and rents. Is it not a hard thing that an honest British +snob, if he wants to move in the highest circles of fiction, must +turn to French novelists, or Russian, or American? As to the +American novels of the elite and the beau monde, their elegance is +obscured to English eyes, because that which makes one New Yorker +better than another, that which creates the Upper Ten Thousand (dear +phrase!) of New York, is so inconspicuous. For example, the +scientific inquirer may venture himself among the novels of two +young American authors. Few English students make this voyage of +exploration. But the romances of these ingenious writers are +really, or really try to be, a kind of fashionable novels. It is a +queer domain of fashion, to be sure, peopled by the strangest +aborigines, who talk and are talked about in a language most +interesting to the philologist. Here poor Lady Fanny Flummery would +have been sadly to seek, for her characters, though noble, were +moral, and her pen was wielded on the side of Church and State. But +these western fashionables have morals and a lingo of their own, +made in equal parts of the American idioms and of expressions +transferred from the jargon of Decadence and the Parnassiculet +Contemporain. As one peruses these novels one thinks of a new tale +to be told--The Last of the Fashionables, who died away, like the +buffalo and the grisly bear, in some canon or forest of the Wild +West. I think this distinguished being, Ultimus hominum +venustiorum, will find the last remnants of the Gentlemanly Party in +some Indian tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him raised to the rank +of chief, and leading the red-skinned and painted cavaliers on the +war-path against the Vulgarians of the ultimate Democracy. To +depict this dandy chief would require the art at once of a Cooper +and a Ouida. Let me attempt - + + +THE LAST FIGHT OF FOUR HAIR-BRUSHES + + +By this time the Sioux were flying in all directions, mowed down by +the fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of Little Big Horn +Creek was strewn with the bodies of writhing braves. On the livid +and volcanic heights of Mount Buncombe, the painted tents were +blazing merrily. But on a mound above the creek, an ancient +fortress of some long-forgotten people, a small group of Indian +horsemen, might be observed, steady as rocks in the refluent tide of +war. The fire from their Winchester repeaters blazed out like the +streamers of the Northern Lights. Again and again the flower of the +United States army had charged up the mound, only to recoil in +flight, or to line the cliff with their corpses. The First Irish +Cuirassiers had been annihilated: Parnell's own, alas! in the heat +of the combat had turned their fratricidal black-thorns on +M'Carthy's brigade, and these two gallant squadrons were mixed and +broken, falling beneath the blows of brothers estranged. + +But at last the fire from the Redmen on the bluff slackened and grew +silent. The ammunition was exhausted. There was a movement in the +group of braves. Crazy Horse and Bald Coyote turned to Four Hair- +Brushes, who sat his steed Atalanta, last winner of the last Grand +National, with all the old careless elegance of the Row. + +"Four Hair-Brushes," said Crazy Horse (and a tear rolled down his +painted cheek), "nought is left but flight." + +"Then fly," said Four Hair-Brushes, languidly, lighting a cigarette, +which he took from a diamond-studded gold etui, the gift of the +Kaiser in old days. + +"Nay, not without the White Chief," said Bald Coyote; and he seized +the reins of Four Hair-Brushes, to lead him from that stricken +field. + +"Vous etes trop vieux jeu, mon ami," murmured Four Hair-Brushes, "je +ne suis ni Edouard II., ni Charles Edouard e Culloden. Quatre- +brosses meurt, mais il ne se rend pas." + +The Indian released his hold, baffled by the erudition and the calm +courage of his captain. + +"I make tracks," he said; and, swinging round so that his horse +concealed his body, he galloped down the bluff, and through the +American cavalry, scattering death from the arrows which he loosed +under his horse's neck. + +Four Hair-Brushes was alone. + +Unarmed, as ever, he sat, save for the hunting-whip in his right +hand. + +"Scalp him!" yelled the Friendly Crows. + +"Nay, take him alive: a seemlier knight never backed steed!" cried +the gallant Americans. + +From their midst rode a courteous cavalier, Captain John Barry, the +scholar, the hero of sword and pen. + +"Yield thee, Sir Knight!" he said, doffing his kepi in martial +courtesy. + +Four Hair-Brushes replied to his salute, and was opening his curved +and delicate lips to speak, when a chance bullet struck him full in +the breast. He threw up his arms, reeled, and fell. The gallant +American, leaping from saddle to ground, rushed to raise his head. + +Through the war-paint he recognised him. + +"Great Heaven!" he cried, "it is--" + +"Hush!" whispered Four Hair-Brushes, with a weary smile: "let +Annesley de Vere of the Blues die unnamed. Tell them that I fell in +harness." + +He did, indeed. Under his feathered and painted cloak Barry found +that Annesley, ever careful of his figure, ever loyal in love, the +last of the Dandies, yet wore the corset of Madame de Telliere. It +was wet with his life-blood. + +"So dies," said Barry, "the last English gentleman." + + + +THACKERAY + + + +"I thought how some people's towering intellects and splendid +cultivated geniuses rise upon simple, beautiful foundations hidden +out of sight." Thus, in his Letters to Mrs. Brookfield, Mr. +Thackeray wrote, after visiting the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, +with its "charming, harmonious, powerful combination of arches and +shafts, beautiful whichever way you see them developed, like a fine +music." The simile applies to his own character and genius, to his +own and perhaps to that of most great authors, whose works are our +pleasure and comfort in this troublesome world. There are critics +who profess a desire to hear nothing, or as little as may be, of the +lives of great artists, whether their instrument of art was the pen, +or the brush, or the chisel, or the strings and reeds of music. +With those critics perhaps most of us agree, when we read books that +gossip about Shelley, or Coleridge, or Byron. "Give us their +poetry," we say, "and leave their characters alone: we do not want +tattle about Claire and chatter about Harriet; we want to be happy +with 'The Skylark' or 'The Cloud.'" Possibly this instinct is +correct, where such a poet as Shelley is concerned, whose life, like +his poetry, was as "the life of winds and tides," whose genius, +unlike the skylark's, was more true to the point of heaven than the +point of home. But reflection shows us that on the whole, as Mr. +Thackeray says, a man's genius must be builded on the foundations of +his character. Where that genius deals with the mingled stuff of +human life--sorrow, desire, love, hatred, kindness, meanness--then +the foundation of character is especially important. People are +sometimes glad that we know so little of Shakespeare the man; yet +who can doubt that a true revelation of his character would be not +less worthy, noble and charming than the general effect of his +poems? In him, it is certain, we should always find an example of +nobility, of generosity, of charity and kindness and self- +forgetfulness. Indeed, we find these qualities, as a rule, in the +biographies of the great sympathetic poets and men of genius of the +pen--I do not say in the lives of rebels of genius, "meteoric poets" +like Byron. The same basis, the same foundations of rectitude, of +honour, of goodness, of melancholy, and of mirth, underlie the art +of Moliere, of Scott, of Fielding, and as his correspondence shows, +of Thackeray. + +It seems probable that a complete biography of Thackeray will never +be written. It was his wish to live in his works alone: that wish +his descendants respect; and we must probably regard the Letters to +Mr. and Mrs. Brookfield as the last private and authentic record of +the man which will be given, at least to this generation. In these +Letters all sympathetic readers will find the man they have long +known from his writings--the man with a heart so tender that the +world often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an +assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so +unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but +this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing +shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of +us must often feel with regret that he allowed himself to be made +too unhappy by the spectacle of failings so common in the world he +knew best, that he dwelt on them too long and lashed them too +complacently. One hopes never to read "Lovel the Widower" again, +and one gladly skips some of the speeches of the Old Campaigner in +"The Newcomes." They are terrible, but not more terrible than life. +Yet it is hard to understand how Mr. Ruskin, for example, can let +such scenes and characters hide from his view the kindness, +gentleness, and pity of Thackeray's nature. The Letters must open +all eyes that are not wilfully closed, and should at last overcome +every prejudice. + +In the Letters we see a man literally hungering and thirsting after +affection, after love--a man cut off by a cruel stroke of fate from +his natural solace, from the centre of a home. + + +"God took from me a lady dear," + + +he says, in the most touching medley of doggerel and poetry, made +"instead of writing my Punch this morning." Losing "a lady dear," +he takes refuge as he may, he finds comfort as he can, in all the +affections within his reach, in the society of an old college friend +and of his wife, in the love of all children, beginning with his +own; in a generous liking for all good work and for all good +fellows. + +Did any man of letters except Scott ever write of his rivals as +Thackeray wrote of Dickens? Artists are a jealous race. "Potter +hates potter, and poet hates poet," as Hesiod said so long ago. +This jealousy is not mere envy, it is really a strong sense of how +things ought to be done, in any art, touched with a natural +preference for a man's own way of doing them. Now, what could be +more unlike than the "ways" of Dickens and Thackeray? The subjects +chosen by these great authors are not more diverse than their +styles. Thackeray writes like a scholar, not in the narrow sense, +but rather as a student and a master of all the refinements and +resources of language. Dickens copies the chaff of the street, or +he roams into melodramatics, "drops into poetry"--blank verse at +least--and touches all with peculiarities, we might say mannerisms, +of his own. I have often thought, and even tried to act on the +thought, that some amusing imaginary letters might be written, from +characters of Dickens about characters of Thackeray, from characters +of Thackeray about characters of Dickens. They might be supposed to +meet each other in society, and describe each other. Can you not +fancy Captain Costigan on Dick Swiveller, Blanche Amory on Agnes, +Pen on David Copperfield, and that "tiger" Steerforth? What would +the family solicitor of "The Newcomes" have to say of Mr. +Tulkinghorn? How would George Warrington appreciate Mr. Pickwick? +Yes, the two great novelists were as opposed as two men could be--in +manner, in style, in knowledge of books, and of the world. And yet +how admirably Thackeray writes about Dickens, in his letters as in +his books! How he delights in him! How manly is that emulation +which enables an author to see all the points in his rival, and not +to carp at them, but to praise, and be stimulated to keener effort! + +Consider this passage. "Have you read Dickens? O! it is charming! +Brave Dickens! It has some of his very prettiest touches--those +inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man of him, and +the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of +good." + +Thackeray is just as generous, and perhaps more critical, in writing +of Kingsley. "A fine, honest, go-a-head fellow, who charges a +subject heartily, impetuously, with the greatest courage and +simplicity; but with narrow eyes (his are extraordinarily brave, +blue and honest), and with little knowledge of the world, I think. +But he is superior to us worldlings in many ways, and I wish I had +some of his honest pluck." + +I have often wished that great authors, when their days of creation +were over, when "their minds grow grey and bald," would condescend +to tell us the history of their books. Sir Walter Scott did +something of this kind in the prefaces to the last edition of the +Waverley Novels published during his life. What can be more +interesting than his account, in the introduction to the "Fortunes +of Nigel," of how he worked, how he planned, and found all his plots +and plans overridden by the demon at the end of his pen! But Sir +Walter was failing when he began those literary confessions; good as +they are, he came to them too late. Yet these are not confessions +which an author can make early. The pagan Aztecs only confessed +once in a lifetime--in old age, when they had fewer temptations to +fall to their old loves: then they made a clean breast of it once +for all. So it might be with an author. While he is in his +creative vigour, we want to hear about his fancied persons, about +Pendennis, Beatrix, Becky, not about himself, and how he invented +them. But when he has passed his best, then it is he who becomes of +interest; it is about himself that we wish him to speak, as far as +he modestly may. Who would not give "Lovel the Widower" and +"Philip" for some autobiographical and literary prefaces to the +older novels? They need not have been more egotistic than the +"Roundabout Papers." They would have had far more charm. Some +things cannot be confessed. We do not ask who was the original Sir +Pitt Crawley, or the original Blanche Amory. But we might learn in +what mood, in what circumstances the author wrote this passage or +that. + +The Letters contain a few notes of this kind, a few literary +confessions. We hear that Emmy Sedley was partly suggested by Mrs. +Brookfield, partly by Thackeray's mother, much by his own wife. +There scarce seems room for so many elements in Emmy's personality. +For some reason ladies love her not, nor do men adore her. I have +been her faithful knight ever since I was ten years old and read +"Vanity Fair" somewhat stealthily. Why does one like her except +because she is such a thorough woman? She is not clever, she is not +very beautiful, she is unhappy, and she can be jealous. One pities +her, and that is akin to a more tender sentiment; one pities her +while she sits in the corner, and Becky's green eyes flatter her oaf +of a husband; one pities her in the poverty of her father's house, +in the famous battle over Daffy's Elixir, in the separation from the +younger George. You begin to wish some great joy to come to her: +it does not come unalloyed; you know that Dobbin had bad quarters of +an hour with this lady, and had to disguise a little of his +tenderness for his own daughter. Yes, Emmy is more complex than she +seems, and perhaps it needed three ladies to contribute the various +elements of her person and her character. One of them, the jealous +one, lent a touch to Helen Pendennis, to Laura, to Lady Castlewood. +Probably this may be the reason why some persons dislike Thackeray +so. His very best women are not angels. {3} Are the very best women +angels? It is a pious opinion--that borders on heresy. + +When the Letters began to be written, in 1847, Thackeray had his +worst years, in a worldly sense, behind him. They were past: the +times when he wrote in Galignani for ten francs a day. Has any +literary ghoul disinterred his old ten-franc articles in Galignani? +The time of "Barry Lyndon," too, was over. He says nothing of that +masterpiece, and only a word about "The Great Hoggarty Diamond." "I +have been re-reading it. Upon my word and honour, if it doesn't +make you cry, I shall have a mean opinion of you. It was written at +a time of great affliction, when my heart was very soft and humble. +Amen. Ich habe auch viel geliebt." Of "Pendennis," as it goes on, +he writes that it is "awfully stupid," which has not been the +verdict of the ages. He picks up materials as he passes. He dines +with some officers, and perhaps he stations them at Chatteris. He +meets Miss G-, and her converse suggests a love passage between Pen +and Blanche. Why did he dislike fair women so? It runs all through +his novels. Becky is fair. Blanche is fair. Outside the old +yellow covers of "Pendennis," you see the blonde mermaid, "amusing, +and clever, and depraved," dragging the lover to the sea, and the +nut-brown maid holding him back. Angelina, of the "Rose and the +Ring," is the Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba +is brune. In writing "Pendennis" he had a singular experience. He +looked over his own "back numbers," and found "a passage which I had +utterly forgotten as if I had never read or written it." In +Lockhart's "Life of Scott," James Ballantyne says that "when the +'Bride of Lammermoor' was first put into his hands in a complete +shape, he did not recollect one single incident, character, or +conversation it contained." That is to say, he remembered nothing +of his own invention, though his memory of the traditional parts was +as clear as ever. Ballantyne remarks, "The history of the human +mind contains nothing more wonderful." The experience of Thackeray +is a parallel to that of Scott. "Pendennis," it must be noted, was +interrupted by a severe illness, and "The Bride of Lammermoor" was +dictated by Sir Walter when in great physical pain. On one occasion +Thackeray "lit upon a very stupid part of 'Pendennis,' I am sorry to +say; and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't +write a complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come +back from America and do it?" + +Did he ever write "a complete, good story"? Did any one ever do +such a thing as write a three-volume, novel, or a novel of equal +length, which was "a complete, good story"? Probably not; or if any +mortal ever succeeded in the task, it was the great Alexander Dumas. +"The Three Musketeers," I take leave to think, and "Twenty Years +After," are complete good stories, good from beginning to end, +stories from beginning to end without a break, without needless +episode. Perhaps one may say as much for "Old Mortality," and for +"Quentin Durward." But Scott and Dumas were born story-tellers; +narrative was the essence of their genius at its best; the current +of romance rolls fleetly on, bearing with it persons and events, +mirroring scenes, but never ceasing to be the main thing--the +central interest. Perhaps narrative like this is the chief success +of the novelist. He is triumphant when he carries us on, as Wolf, +the famous critic, was carried on by the tide of the Iliad, "in that +pure and rapid current of action." Nobody would claim this especial +merit for Thackeray. He is one of the greatest of novelists; he +displays human nature and human conduct so that we forget ourselves +in his persons, but he does not make us forget ourselves in their +fortunes. Whether Clive does or does not marry Ethel, or Esmond, +Beatrix, does not very greatly excite our curiosity. We cannot ring +the bells for Clive's second wedding as the villagers celebrated the +bridal of Pamela. It is the development of character, it is the +author's comments, it is his own personality and his unmatched and +inimitable style, that win our admiration and affection. We can +take up "Vanity Fair," or "Pendennis," or "The Newcomes," just where +the book opens by chance, and read them with delight, as we may read +Montaigne. When one says one can take up a book anywhere, it +generally means that one can also lay it down anywhere. But it is +not so with Thackeray. Whenever we meet him he holds us with his +charm, his humour, his eloquence, his tenderness. If he has not, in +the highest degree, the narrative power, he does possess, in a +degree perhaps beyond any other writer of English, that kind of +poetic quality which is not incompatible with prose writing. + +A great deal has been said about prose poetry. As a rule, it is +very poor stuff. As prose it has a tendency to run into blank +verse; as poetry it is highly rhetorical and self-conscious. It +would be invidious and might be irritating to select examples from +modern masters of prose-poetry. They have never been poets. But +the prose of a poet like Milton may be, and is, poetical in the true +sense; and so, upon occasions, was the prose of Thackeray. Some +examples linger always in the memory, and dwell with their music in +the hearing. One I have quoted elsewhere; the passage in "The +Newcomes" where Clive, at the lecture on the Poetry of the Domestic +Affections, given by Sir Barnes Newcome, sees Ethel, whom he has +lost. + +"And the past, and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and +passions, and tones and looks, for ever echoing in the heart and +present in the memory--those, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as +he looked across the great gulf of time and parting and grief, and +beheld the woman he had loved for many years." "The great gulf of +time, and parting, and grief,"--some of us are on the farther side +of it, and our old selves, and our old happiness, and our old +affections beyond, grow near, grow clear, now and then, at the sight +of a face met by chance in the world, at the chance sound of a +voice. Such are human fortunes, and human sorrows; not the worst, +not the greatest, for these old loves do not die--they live in +exile, and are the better parts of our souls. Not the greatest, nor +the worst of sorrows, for shame is worse, and hopeless hunger, and a +life all of barren toil without distractions, without joy, must be +far worse. But of those myriad tragedies of the life of the poor, +Thackeray does not write. How far he was aware of them, how deeply +he felt them, we are not informed. His highest tragedy is that of +the hunger of the heart; his most noble prose sounds in that meeting +of Harry Esmond with Lady Castlewood, in the immortal speech which +has the burden, "bringing your sheaves with you!" All that scene +appears to me no less unique, no less unsurpassable, no less +perfect, than the "Ode to the Nightingale" of Keats, or the Lycidas +of Milton. It were superfluous to linger over the humour of +Thackeray. Only Shakespeare and Dickens have graced the language +with so many happy memories of queer, pleasant people, with so many +quaint phrases, each of which has a kind of freemasonry, and when +uttered, or recalled, makes all friends of Thackeray into family +friends of each other. The sayings of Mr. Harry Foker, of Captain +Costigan, of Gumbo, are all like old dear family phrases, they live +imperishable and always new, like the words of Sir John, the fat +knight, or of Sancho Panza, or of Dick Swiveller, or that other +Sancho, Sam Weller. They have that Shakespearian gift of being ever +appropriate, and undyingly fresh. + +These are among the graces of Thackeray, these and that inimitable +style, which always tempts and always baffles the admiring and +despairing copyist. Where did he find the trick of it, of the words +which are invariably the best words, and invariably fall exactly in +the best places? "The best words in the best places," is part of +Coleridge's definition of poetry; it is also the essence of +Thackeray's prose. In these Letters to Mrs. Brookfield the style is +precisely the style of the novels and essays. The style, with +Thackeray, was the man. He could not write otherwise. But +probably, to the last, this perfection was not mechanical, was not +attained without labour and care. In Dr. John Brown's works, in his +essay on Thackeray, there is an example of a proof-sheet on which +the master has made corrections, and those corrections bring the +passage up to his accustomed level, to the originality of his +rhythm. Here is the piece:- + + +"Another Finis, another slice of life which Tempus edax has +devoured! And I may have to write the word once or twice, perhaps, +and then an end of Ends. [Finite is ever and Infinite beginning.] +Oh, the troubles, the cares, the ennui, [the complications,] the +repetitions, the old conversations over and over again, and here and +there all the delightful passages, the dear, the brief, the forever- +remembered! + +"[And then] A few chapters more, and then the last, and behold +Finis itself coming to an end, and the Infinite beginning." + + +"How like music this," writes Dr. John Brown--"like one trying the +same air in different ways, as it were, searching out and sounding +all its depths!" The words were almost the last that Thackeray +wrote, perhaps the very last. They reply, as it were, to other +words which he had written long before to Mrs. Brookfield. + +"I don't pity anybody who leaves the world; not even a fair young +girl in her prime; I pity those remaining. On her journey, if it +pleases God to send her, depend on it there's no cause for grief, +that's but an earthly condition. Out of our stormy life, and +brought nearer the Divine light and warmth, there must be a serene +climate. Can't you fancy sailing into the calm?" + +Ah! nowhere else shall we find the Golden Bride, "passionless bride, +divine Tranquillity." + +As human nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say truth, +Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the lesson of +his life and his writings? So people may ask, and yet how futile is +the answer! Life has a different meaning, a different riddle, a +different reply for each of us. There is not one sphinx, but many +sphinxes--as many as there are women and men. We must all answer +for ourselves. Pascal has one answer, "Believe!" Moliere has +another, "Observe!" Thackeray's answer is, "Be good and enjoy!" but +a melancholy enjoyment was his. Dr. John Brown says: + +"His persistent state, especially for the later half of his life, +was profoundly morne, there is no other word for it. This arose in +part from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and +wretchedness of mankind . . . This feeling, acting on a harsh and +savage nature, ended in the saeva indignatio of Swift; acting on the +kindly and sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to +compassionate sadness." + +A great part of his life, and most of his happiness, lay in love. +"Ich habe auch viel geliebt," he says, and it is a hazardous kind of +happiness that attends great affection. Your capital is always at +the mercy of failures, of death, of jealousy, of estrangement. But +he had so much love to give that he could not but trust those +perilous investments. + +Other troubles he had that may have been diversions from those. He +did not always keep that manly common sense in regard to criticism, +which he shows in a letter to Mrs. Brookfield. "Did you read the +Spectator's sarcastic notice of 'Vanity Fair'? I don't think it is +just, but think Kintoul (Rintoul?) is a very honest man, and rather +inclined to deal severely with his private friends lest he should +fall into the other extreme: to be sure he keeps out of it, I mean +the other extreme, very well." + +That is the way to take unfavourable criticisms--not to go declaring +that a man is your enemy because he does not like your book, your +ballads, your idyls, your sermons, what you please. Why cannot +people keep literature and liking apart? Am I bound to think Jones +a bad citizen, a bad man, a bad householder, because his poetry +leaves me cold? Need he regard me as a malevolent green-eyed +monster, because I don't want to read him? Thackeray was not always +true in his later years to these excellent principles. He was +troubled about trifles of criticisms and gossip, bagatelles not +worth noticing, still less worth remembering and recording. Do not +let us record them, then. + +We cannot expect for Thackeray, we cannot even desire for him, a +popularity like that of Dickens. If ever any man wrote for the +people, it was Dickens. Where can we find such a benefactor, and +who has lightened so many lives with such merriment as he? But +Thackeray wrote, like the mass of authors, for the literary class-- +for all who have the sense of style, the delight in the best +language. He will endure while English literature endures, while +English civilisation lasts. We cannot expect all the world to share +our affection for this humourist whose mirth springs from his +melancholy. His religion, his education, his life in this +unsatisfying world, are not the life, the education, the religion of +the great majority of human kind. He cannot reach so many ears and +hearts as Shakespeare or Dickens, and some of those whom he reaches +will always and inevitably misjudge him. Mais c'est mon homme, one +may say, as La Fontaine said of Moliere. Of modern writers, putting +Scott aside, he is to me the most friendly and sympathetic. Great +genius as he was, he was also a penman, a journalist; and +journalists and penmen will always look to him as their big brother, +the man in their own line of whom they are proudest. As devout +Catholics did not always worship the greatest saints, but the +friendliest saints, their own, so we scribes burn our cheap incense +to St. William Makepeace. He could do all that any of us could do, +and he did it infinitely better. A piece of verse for Punch, a +paragraph, a caricature, were not beneath the dignity of the author +of "Esmond." He had the kindness and helpfulness which I, for one, +have never met a journalist who lacked. He was a good Englishman; +the boy within him never died; he loved children, and boys, and a +little slang, and a boxing match. If he had failings, who knew them +better than he? How often he is at once the boy at the swishing +block and Dr. Birch who does not spare the rod! Let us believe with +that beloved physician, our old friend Dr. John Brown, that "Mr. +Thackeray was much greater, much nobler than his works, great and +noble as they are." Let us part with him, remembering his own +words: + + +"Come wealth or want, come good or ill, +Let young and old accept their part, +And bow before the awful Will, +And bear it with an honest heart." + + + +DICKENS + + + +"I cannot read Dickens!" How many people make this confession, with +a front of brass, and do not seem to know how poor a figure they +cut! George Eliot says that a difference of taste in jokes is a +great cause of domestic discomfort. A difference of taste in books, +when it is decided and vigorous, breaks many a possible friendship, +and nips many a young liking in the bud. I would not willingly seem +intolerant. A man may not like Sophocles, may speak disrespectfully +of Virgil, and even sneer at Herodotus, and yet may be endured. But +he or she (it is usually she) who contemns Scott, and "cannot read +Dickens," is a person with whom I would fain have no further +converse. If she be a lady, and if one meets her at dinner, she +must of course be borne with, and "suffered gladly." But she has +dug a gulf that nothing can bridge; she may be fair, clever and +popular, but she is Anathema. I feel towards her (or him if he +wears a beard) as Bucklaw did towards the person who should make +inquiries about that bridal night of Lammermoor. + +But this admission does not mean that one is sealed of the tribe of +Charles--that one is a Dickensite pure and simple, convinced and +devout--any more than Mr. Matthew Arnold was a Wordsworthian. +Dickens has many such worshippers, especially (and this is an +argument in favour of the faith) among those who knew him in his +life. He must have had a wonderful charm; for his friends in life +are his literary partisans, his uncompromising partisans, even to +this day. They will have no half-hearted admiration, and scout him +who tries to speak of Dickens as of an artist not flawless, no less +than they scorn him who cannot read Dickens at all. At one time +this honourable enthusiasm (as among the Wordsworthians) took the +shape of "endless imitation." That is over; only here and there is +an imitator of the master left in the land. All his own genius was +needed to carry his mannerisms; the mannerisms without the genius +were an armour that no devoted David had proved, that none could +wear with success. + +Of all great writers since Scott, Dickens is probably the man to +whom the world owes most gratitude. No other has caused so many sad +hearts to be lifted up in laughter; no other has added so much mirth +to the toilsome and perplexed life of men, of poor and rich, of +learned and unlearned. "A vast hope has passed across the world," +says Alfred de Musset; we may say that with Dickens a happy smile, a +joyous laugh, went round this earth. To have made us laugh so +frequently, so inextinguishably, so kindly--that is his great good +deed. It will be said, and with a great deal of truth, that he has +purged us with pity and terror as well as with laughter. But it is +becoming plain that his command of tears is less assured than of +old, and I cannot honestly regret that some of his pathos--not all, +by any means--is losing its charm and its certainty of appeal. +Dickens's humour was rarely too obvious; it was essentially +personal, original, quaint, unexpected, and his own. His pathos was +not infrequently derived from sources open to all the world, and +capable of being drawn from by very commonplace writers. Little +Nells and Dombeys, children unhappy, overthrown early in the melee +of the world, and dying among weeping readers, no longer affect us +as they affected another generation. Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the +author of "Misunderstood," once made some people weep like anything +by these simple means. Ouida can do it; plenty of people can do it. +Dickens lives by virtue of what none but he can do: by virtue of +Sairey Gamp, and Sam Weller, and Dick Swiveller, and Mr. Squeers, +with a thousand other old friends, of whom we can never weary. No +more than Cleopatra's can custom stale their infinite variety. + +I do not say that Dickens' pathos is always of the too facile sort, +which plays round children's death-beds. Other pathos he has, more +fine and not less genuine. It may be morbid and contemptible to +feel "a great inclination to cry" over David Copperfield's boyish +infatuation for Steerforth; but I feel it. Steerforth was a +"tiger,"--as Major Pendennis would have said, a tiger with his curly +hair and his ambrosial whiskers. But when a little boy loses his +heart to a big boy he does not think of this. Traddles thought of +it. "Shame, J. Steerforth!" cried Traddles, when Steerforth bullied +the usher. Traddles had not lost his heart, nor set up the big boy +as a god in the shrine thereof. But boys do these things; most of +us have had our Steerforths--tall, strong, handsome, brave, good- +humoured. Far off across the years I see the face of such an one, +and remember that emotion which is described in "David Copperfield," +chap. xix., towards the end of the chapter. I don't know any other +novelist who has touched this young and absolutely disinterested +belief of a little boy in a big one--touched it so kindly and +seriously, that is there is a hint of it in "Dr. Birch's School +Days." + +But Dickens is always excellent in his boys, of whom he has drawn +dozens of types--all capital. There is Tommy Traddles, for example. +And how can people say that Dickens could not draw a gentleman? The +boy who shouted, "Shame, J. Steerforth!" was a gentleman, if one may +pretend to have an opinion about a theme so difficult. The Dodger +and Charley Bates are delightful boys--especially Bates. Pip, in +the good old days, when he was the prowling boy, and fought Herbert +Pocket, was not less attractive, and Herbert himself, with his +theory and practice of the art of self-defence--could Nelson have +been more brave, or Shelley (as in Mr. Matthew Arnold's opinion) +more "ineffectual"? Even the boys at Dotheboys Hall are each of +them quite distinct. Dickens's boys are almost as dear to me as +Thackeray's--as little Rawdon himself. There is one exception. I +cannot interest myself in Little Dombey. Little David Copperfield +is a jewel of a boy with a turn for books. Doubtless he is created +out of Dickens's memories of himself as a child. That is true +pathos again, and not overwrought, when David is sent to Creakle's, +and his poor troubled mother dare hardly say farewell to him. + +And this brings us back to that debatable thing--the pathos of +Dickens--from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his +boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell +is another. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, who criticised +"Marmion" and the "Lady of the Lake" so vindictively, shed tears +over Little Nell. It is a matter of taste, or, as Science might +say, of the lachrymal glands as developed in each individual. But +the lachrymal glands of this amateur are not developed in that +direction. Little Dombey and Little Nell leave me with a pair of +dry eyes. I do not "melt visibly" over Little Dombey, like the +weak-eyed young man who took out his books and trunk to the coach. +The poor little chap was feeble and feverish, and had dreams of +trying to stop a river with his childish hands, or to choke it with +sand. It may be very good pathology, but I cannot see that it is at +all right pathos. One does not like copy to be made out of the +sufferings of children or of animals. One's heart hardens: the +object is too manifest, the trick is too easy. Conceive a child of +Dombey's age remarking, with his latest breath, "Tell them that the +picture on the stairs at school is not Divine enough!" That is not +the delirium of infancy, that is art-criticism: it is the Athenaeum +on Mr. Holman Hunt. It is not true to nature; it is not good in +art: it is the kind of thing that appears in Sunday-school books +about the virtuous little boy who died. There is more true pathos +in many a page of "Huckleberry Finn." Yet this is what Jeffrey +gushed over. "There has been nothing like the actual dying of that +sweet Paul." So much can age enfeeble the intellect, that he who +had known Scott, and yet nibbled at his fame, descended to admiring +the feeblest of false sentiment. As for Little Nell, who also has +caused floods of tears to be shed, her case is sufficiently +illustrated by the picture in the first edition ("Master Humphrey's +Clock,", 1840, p. 210): + + +"'When I die +Put near me something that has loved the light, +And had the sky above it always.' Those +Were her words." + +"Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead!" + + +The pathos is about as good as the prose, and THAT is blank verse. +Are the words in the former quotation in the least like anything +that a little girl would say? A German sentimentalist might have +said them; Obermann might have murmured them in his weaker moments. +Let us try a piece of domestic pathos by another hand. It is the +dawn of Waterloo. + +"Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and +looked at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he--to pray for +one so spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to the +bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep, +and he bent over the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale +face. Two fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he stooped +down. 'I am awake, George,' the poor child said, with a sob." + +I know I am making enemies of a large proportion of the readers of +this page. "Odious, sneering beast!" is the quotation which they +will apply, perhaps unconscious of its origin, to a critic who is +humble but would fain be honest, to a critic who thinks that Dickens +has his weak places, and that his pathos is one of these. It cannot +be helped. Each of us has his author who is a favourite, a friend, +an idol, whose immaculate perfection he maintains against all +comers. For example, things are urged against Scott; I receive them +in the attitude of the deaf adder of St. Augustine, who stops one +ear with his tail and presses the other against the dust. The same +with Moliere: M. Scherer utters complaints against Moliere! He +would not convince me, even if I were convinced. So, with regard to +Dickens, the true believer will not listen, he will not be +persuaded. But if any one feels a little shaken, let him try it +another way. There is a character in M. Alphonse Daudet's "Froment +Jeune et Rissler Aine"--a character who, people say, is taken bodily +from Dickens. This is Desiree Delobelle, the deformed girl, the +daughter of un rate, a pretentious imbecile actor. She is poor, +stunted, laborious, toiling at a small industry; she is in love, is +rejected, she tries to drown herself, she dies. The sequence of +ideas is in Dickens's vein; but read the tale, and I think you will +see how little the thing is overdone, how simple and unforced it is, +compared with analogous persons and scenes in the work of the +English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has been raised, +of course, by critical cretins. M. Daudet, as I understand what he +says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not read Dickens at all, when he +wrote "Froment Jeune"--certainly had not read "Our Mutual Friend." +But there is something of Dickens's genius in M. Daudet's, and that +something is kept much better in hand by the Frenchman, is more +subordinated to the principles of taste and of truth. + +On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at Delobelle, +the father of Desiree, and compare him with Dickens's splendid +strollers, with Mr. Vincent Crummles, and Mr. Lenville, and the +rest. As in Desiree so in Delobelle, M. Daudet's picture is much +the more truthful. But it is truthful with a bitter kind of truth. +Now, there is nothing not genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs. +Crummles and the Infant Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a +region unlike the region of the pathetic, into a world that welcomes +charge or caricature, the world of humour. We do not know, we never +meet Crummleses quite so unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a +Prussian," who "can't think who puts these things into the papers." +But we do meet stage people who come very near to this naivete of +self-advertisement, and some of whom are just as dismal as Crummles +is delightful. + +Here, no doubt, is Dickens's forte. Here his genius is all pure +gold, in his successful studies or inventions of the humorous, of +character parts. One literally does not know where to begin or end +in one's admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies +with such troops of dear and impossible friends. "Pickwick" comes +practically first, and he never surpassed "Pickwick." He was a poor +story-teller, and in "Pickwick" he had no story to tell; he merely +wandered at adventure in that merrier England which was before +railways were. "Pickwick" is the last of the stories of the road +that begin in the wandering, aimless, adventurous romances of +Greece, or in Petronius Arbiter, and that live with the life of "Gil +Blas" and "Don Quixote," of "Le Roman Comique," of "Tom Jones and +"Joseph Andrews." These tales are progresses along highways +bristling with adventure, and among inns full of confusion, Mr. +Pickwick's affair with the lady with yellow curl-papers being a mild +example. Though "Tom Jones" has a plot so excellent, no plot is +needed here, and no consecutive story is required. Detached +experiences, vagrants of every rank that come and go, as in real +life, are all the material of the artist. With such materials +Dickens was exactly suited; he was at home on high-road and lane, +street and field-path, in inns and yeomen's warm hospitable houses. +Never a humour escaped him, and he had such a wealth of fun and high +spirits in these glad days as never any other possessed before. He +was not in the least a bookish man, not in any degree a scholar; but +Nature taught him, and while he wrote with Nature for his teacher, +with men and women for his matter, with diversion for his aim, he +was unsurpassable--nay, he was unapproachable. + +He could not rest here; he was, after all, a child of an age that +grew sad, and earnest, and thoughtful. He saw abuses round him-- +injustice, and oppression, and cruelty. He had a heart to which +those things were not only abhorrent, but, as it were, maddening. +He knew how great an influence he wielded, and who can blame him for +using it in any cause he thought good? Very possibly he might have +been a greater artist if he had been less of a man, if he had been +quite disinterested, and had never written "with a purpose." That +is common, and even rather obsolete critical talk. But when we +remember that Fielding, too, very often wrote "with a purpose," and +that purpose the protection of the poor and unfriended; and when we +remember what an artist Fielding was, I do not see how we can blame +Dickens. Occasionally he made his art and his purpose blend so +happily that his work was all the better for his benevolent +intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny Squeers, +Wackford and all, to Dickens's indignation against the nefarious +school pirates of his time. If he is less successful in attacking +the Court of Chancery, and very much less successful still with the +Red Tape and Circumlocution Office affairs, that may be merely +because he was less in the humour, and not because he had a purpose +in his mind. Every one of a man's books cannot be his masterpiece. +There is nothing in literary talk so annoying as the spiteful joy +with which many people declare that an author is "worked out," +because his last book is less happy than some that went before. +There came a time in Dickens' career when his works, to my own taste +and that of many people, seemed laboured, artificial--in fact, more +or less failures. These books range from "Dombey and Son," through +"Little Dorrit," I dare not say to "Our Mutual Friend." One is +afraid that "Edwin Drood," too, suggests the malady which Sir Walter +already detected in his own "Peveril of the Peak." The intense +strain on the faculties of Dickens--as author, editor, reader, and +man of the world--could not but tell on him; and years must tell. +"Philip" is not worthy of the author of "Esmond," nor "Daniel +Deronda" of the author of "Silas Marner." At that time--the time of +the Dorrits and Dombeys--Blackwood's Magazine published a +"Remonstrance with Boz"; nor was it quite superfluous. But Dickens +had abundance of talent still to display--above all in "Great +Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities." The former is, after +"Pickwick," "Copperfield," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and "Nicholas +Nickleby"--after the classics, in fact--the most delightful of +Dickens's books. The story is embroiled, no doubt. What are we to +think of Estelle? Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel +Newcome of odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of +Dickens's the plot is comparatively clear and intelligible. For a +study of a child's life, of the nature Dickens drew best--the river +and the marshes--and for plenty of honest explosive fun, there is no +later book of Dickens's like "Great Expectations." Miss Havisham, +too, in her mouldy bridal splendour, is really impressive; not like +Ralph Nickleby and Monk in "Oliver Twist"--a book of which the plot +remains to me a mystery. {4} Pip and Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle and +Jo are all immortal, and cause laughter inextinguishable. The +rarity of this book, by the way, in its first edition--the usual +library three volumes--is rather difficult to explain. One very +seldom sees it come into the market, and then it is highly priced. + +I have mentioned more than once the obscurity of Dickens's plots. +This difficulty may be accounted for in a very flattering manner. +Where do we lose ourselves? Not in the bare high-road, but among +lanes, between hedges hung with roses, blackberries, morning +glories, where all about us is so full of pleasure that our +attention is distracted and we miss our way. Now, in Dickens--in +"Oliver Twist," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," in "Nicholas Nickleby"-- +there is, as in the lanes, so much to divert and beguile, that we +cease to care very much where the road leads--a road so full of +happy marvels. The dark, plotting villains--like the tramp who +frightened Sir Walter Scott so terribly, as he came from Miss +Baillie's at Hampstead--peer out from behind the hedges now and +then. But we are too much amused by the light hearts that go all +the way, by the Dodger and Crummles and Mrs. Gamp, to care much for +what Ralph, and Monk, and Jonas Chuzzlewit are plotting. It may not +be that the plot is so confused, but that we are too much diverted +to care for the plot, for the incredible machinations of Uriah Heap, +to choose another example. Mr. Micawber cleared these up; but it is +Mr. Micawber that hinders us from heeding them. + +This, at least, is a not unfriendly explanation. Yet I cannot but +believe that, though Dickens took great pains with his plots, he was +not a great plotter. He was not, any more than Thackeray, a story- +teller first and foremost. We can hold in our minds every thread of +Mr. Wilkie Collins' web, or of M. Fortune du Boisgobey's, or of M. +Gaboriau's--all great weavers of intrigues. But Dickens goes about +darkening his intrigue, giving it an extra knot, an extra twist, +hinting here, ominously laughing there, till we get mystified and +bored, and give ourselves up to the fun of the humours, indifferent +to the destinies of villains and victims. Look at "Edwin Drood." A +constant war about the plot rages in the magazines. I believe, for +one, that Edwin Drood was resuscitated; but it gives me no pleasure. +He was too uninteresting. Dickens's hints, nods, mutterings, +forebodings, do not at all impress one like that deepening and +darkening of the awful omens in "The Bride of Lammermoor." Here +Scott--unconsciously, no doubt--used the very manner of Homer in the +Odyssey, and nowhere was his genius more Homeric. That was romance. + +The "Tale of Two Cities" is a great test of the faith--that is in +Dickensites. Of all his works it is the favourite with the wrong +sort! Ladies prefer it. Many people can read it who cannot +otherwise read Dickens at all. This in itself proves that it is not +a good example of Dickens, that it is not central, that it is an +outlying province which he conquered. It is not a favourite of +mine. The humour of the humorous characters rings false--for +example, the fun of the resurrection-man with the wife who "flops." +But Sidney Carton has drawn many tears down cheeks not accustomed to +what Mr. B. in "Pamela" calls "pearly fugitives." + +It sometimes strikes one that certain weaknesses in our great +novelists, in Thackeray as well as Dickens, were caused by their +method of publication. The green and yellow leaves flourished on +the trees for two whole years. Who (except Alexandre the Great) +could write so much, and yet all good? Do we not all feel that +"David Copperfield" should have been compressed? As to "Pendennis," +Mr. Thackeray's bad health when he wrote it might well cause a +certain languor in the later pages. Moreover, he frankly did not +care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, that he +respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows. +Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to +fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through them +all. + +To try to see blots in the sun, and to pick holes in Dickens, seems +ungrateful, and is indeed an ungrateful task; to no mortal man have +more people owed mirth, pleasure, forgetfulness of care, knowledge +of life in strange places. There never was such another as Charles +Dickens, nor shall we see his like sooner than the like of +Shakespeare. And he owed all to native genius and hard work; he +owed almost nothing to literature, and that little we regret. He +was influenced by Carlyle, he adopted his method of nicknames, and +of hammering with wearisome iteration on some peculiarity--for +example, on Carker's teeth, and the patriarch's white hair. By the +way, how incredible is all the Carker episode in "Dombey"! Surely +Dickens can never have intended Edith, from the first, to behave as +she did! People may have influenced him, as they influenced Scott +about "St. Ronan's Well." It has been said that, save for Carlyle, +Dickens was in letters a self-taught artist, that he was no man's +pupil, and borrowed from none. No doubt this makes him less +acceptable to the literary class than a man of letters, like +Thackeray--than a man in whose treasure chamber of memory all the +wealth of the Middle Ages was stored, like Scott. But the native +naked genius of Dickens,--his heart, his mirth, his observation, his +delightful high spirits, his intrepid loathing of wrong, his +chivalrous desire to right it,--these things will make him for ever, +we hope and believe, the darling of the English people. + + + +ADVENTURES OF BUCCANEERS + + + +Most of us, as boys, have envied the buccaneers. The greatest of +all boys, Canon Kingsley, once wrote a pleasing and regretful poem +in which the Last Buccaneer represents himself as a kind of +picturesque philanthropist:- + + +"There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout, +All furnished well with small arms, and cannons round about; +And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free, +To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. +Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and +gold, +Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; +Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, +Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone." + + +The buccaneer is "a gallant sailor," according to Kingsley's poem--a +Robin Hood of the waters, who preys only on the wicked rich, or the +cruel and Popish Spaniard, and the extortionate shipowner. For his +own part, when he is not rescuing poor Indians, the buccaneer lives +mainly "for climate and the affections":- + + +"Oh, sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, +A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, +With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar +Of the breakers on the reef outside that never touched the shore." + + +This is delightfully idyllic, like the lives of the Tahitian +shepherds in the Anti-Jacobin--the shepherds whose occupation was a +sinecure, as there were no sheep in Tahiti. + +Yet the vocation was not really so touchingly chivalrous as the poet +would have us deem. One Joseph Esquemeling, himself a buccaneer, +has written the history and described the exploits of his companions +in plain prose, warning eager youths that "pieces-of-eight do not +grow on every tree," as many raw recruits have believed. Mr. +Esquemeling's account of these matters may be purchased, with a +great deal else that is instructive and entertaining, in "The +History of the Buccaneers in America." My edition (of 1810) is a +dumpy little book, in very small type, and quite a crowd of +publishers took part in the venture. The older editions are +difficult to procure if your pockets are not stuffed with pieces-of- +eight. You do not often find even this volume, but "when found make +a note of," and you have a reply to Canon Kingsley. + +A charitable old Scotch lady, who heard our ghostly foe evil spoken +of, remarked that, "If we were all as diligent and conscientious as +the Devil, it would be better for us." Now, the buccaneers were +certainly models of diligence and conscientiousness in their own +industry, which was to torture people till they gave up their goods, +and then to run them through the body, and spend the spoils over +drink and dice. Except Dampier, who was a clever man, but a poor +buccaneer (Mr. Clark Russell has written his life), they were the +most hideously ruthless miscreants that ever disgraced the earth and +the sea. But their courage and endurance were no less notable than +their greed and cruelty, so that a moral can be squeezed even out of +these abandoned miscreants. The soldiers and sailors who made their +way within gunshot of Khartoum, overcoming thirst, hunger, heat, the +desert, and the gallant children of the desert, did not fight, +march, and suffer more bravely than the scoundrels who sacked +Mairaibo and burned Panama. Their good qualities were no less +astounding and exemplary than their almost incredible wickedness. +They did not lie about in hammocks much, listening to the landward +wind among the woods--the true buccaneers. To tell the truth, most +of them had no particular cause to love the human species. They +were often Europeans who had been sold into slavery on the West +Indian plantations, where they learned lessons of cruelty by +suffering it. Thus Mr. Joseph Esquemeling, our historian, was +beaten, tortured, and nearly starved to death in Tortuga, "so I +determined, not knowing how to get any living, to enter into the +order of the pirates or robbers of the sea." The poor Indians of +the isles, much pitied by Kingsley's buccaneer, had a habit of +sticking their prisoners all over with thorns, wrapped in oily +cotton, whereto they then set fire. "These cruelties many +Christians have seen while they lived among these barbarians." Mr. +Esquemeling was to see, and inflict, plenty of this kind of torment, +which was not out of the way nor unusual. One planter alone had +killed over a hundred of his servants--"the English did the same +with theirs." + +A buccaneer voyage began in stealing a ship, collecting desperadoes, +and torturing the local herdsmen till they gave up their masters' +flocks, which were salted as provisions. Articles of service were +then drawn up, on the principle "no prey, no pay." The spoils, when +taken, were loyally divided as a rule, though Captain Morgan, of +Wales, made no more scruple about robbing his crew than about +barbecuing a Spanish priest. "They are very civil and charitable to +each other, so that if any one wants what another has, with great +willingness they give it to one another." In other matters they did +not in the least resemble the early Christians. A fellow nick-named +The Portuguese may be taken as our first example of their +commendable qualities. + +With a small ship of four guns he had taken a great one of twenty +guns, with 70,000 pieces-of-eight . . . He himself, however, was +presently captured by a larger vessel, and imprisoned on board. +Being carelessly watched, he escaped on two earthen jars (for he +could not swim), reached the woods in Campechy, and walked for a +hundred and twenty miles through the bush. His only food was a few +shell-fish, and by way of a knife he had a large nail, which he +whetted to an edge on a stone. Having made a kind of raft, he +struck a river, and paddled to Golpho Triste, where he found +congenial pirates. With twenty of these, and a boat, he returned to +Campechy, where he had been a prisoner, and actually captured the +large ship in which he had lain captive! Bad luck pursued him, +however: his prize was lost in a storm; he reached Jamaica in a +canoe, and never afterwards was concerned as leader in any affair of +distinction. Not even Odysseus had more resource, nor was more +long-enduring; but Fortune was The Portuguese's foe. + +Braziliano, another buccaneer, served as a pirate before the mast, +and "was beloved and respected by all." Being raised to command, he +took a plate ship; but this success was of indifferent service to +his otherwise amiable character. "He would often appear foolish and +brutish when in drink," and has been known to roast Spaniards alive +on wooden spits "for not showing him hog yards where he might steal +swine." One can hardly suppose that Kingsley would have regretted +THIS buccaneer, even if he had been the last, which unluckily he was +not. His habit of sitting in the street beside a barrel of beer, +and shooting all passers-by who would not drink with him, provoked +remark, and was an act detestable to all friends of temperance +principles. + +Francois L'Olonnois, from southern France, had been kidnapped, and +sold as a slave in the Caribbee Islands. Recovering his freedom, he +plundered the Spanish, says my buccaneer author, "till his +unfortunate death." With two canoes he captured a ship which had +been sent after him, carrying ten guns and a hangman for his express +benefit. This hangman, much to the fellow's chagrin, L'Olonnois put +to death like the rest of his prisoners. His great achievements +were in the Gulf of Venezuela or Bay of Maracaibo. The gulf is a +strong place; the mouth, no wider than a gun-shot, is guarded by two +islands. Far up the inlet is Maracaibo, a town of three thousand +people, fortified and surrounded by woods. Yet farther up is the +town of Gibraltar. To attack these was a desperate enterprise; but +L'Olonnois stole past the forts, and frightened the townsfolk into +the woods. As a rule the Spaniards made the poorest resistance; +there were examples of courage, but none of conduct. With strong +forts, heavy guns, many men, provisions, and ammunition, they +quailed before the desperate valour of the pirates. The towns were +sacked, the fugitives hunted out in the woods, and the most +abominable tortures were applied to make them betray their friends +and reveal their treasures. When they were silent, or had no +treasures to declare, they were hacked, twisted, burned, and starved +to death. + +Such were the manners of L'Olonnois; and Captain Morgan, of Wales, +was even more ruthless. + +Gibraltar was well fortified and strengthened after Maracaibo fell; +new batteries were raised, the way through the woods was barricaded, +and no fewer than eight hundred men were under arms to resist a +small pirate force, exhausted by debauch, and having its retreat cut +off by the forts at the mouth of the great salt-water loch. But +L'Olonnois did not blench: he told the men that audacity was their +one hope, also that he would pistol the first who gave ground. The +men cheered enthusiastically, and a party of three hundred and fifty +landed. The barricaded way they could not force, and in a newly cut +path they met a strong battery which fired grape. But L'Olonnois +was invincible. He tried that old trick which rarely fails, a sham +retreat, and this lured the Spaniards from their earthwork on the +path. The pirates then turned, sword in hand, slew two hundred of +the enemy, and captured eight guns. The town yielded, the people +fled to the woods, and then began the wonted sport of torturing the +prisoners. Maracaibo they ransomed afresh, obtained a pilot, passed +the forts with ease, and returned after sacking a small province. +On a dividend being declared, they parted 260,000 pieces-of-eight +among the band, and spent the pillage in a revel of three weeks. + +L'Olonnois "got great repute" by this conduct, but I rejoice to add +that in a raid on Nicaragua he "miserably perished," and met what +Mr. Esquemeling calls "his unfortunate death." For L'Olonnois was +really an ungentlemanly character. He would hack a Spaniard to +pieces, tear out his heart, and "gnaw it with his teeth like a +ravenous wolf, saying to the rest, 'I will serve you all alike if +you show me not another way'" (to a town which he designed +attacking). In Nicaragua he was taken by the Indians, who, being +entirely on the Spanish side, tore him to pieces and burned him. +Thus we really must not be deluded by the professions of Mr. +Kingsley's sentimental buccaneer, with his pity for "the Indian folk +of old." + +Except Denis Scott, a worthy bandit in his day, Captain Henry Morgan +is the first renowned British buccaneer. He was a young Welshman, +who, after having been sold as a slave in Barbadoes, became a sailor +of fortune. With about four hundred men he assailed Puerto Bello. +"If our number is small," he said, "our hearts are great," and so he +assailed the third city and place of arms which Spain then possessed +in the West Indies. The entrance of the harbour was protected by +two strong castles, judged as "almost impregnable," while Morgan had +no artillery of any avail against fortresses. Morgan had the luck +to capture a Spanish soldier, whom he compelled to parley with the +garrison of the castle. This he stormed and blew up, massacring all +its defenders, while with its guns he disarmed the sister fortress. +When all but defeated in a new assault, the sight of the English +colours animated him afresh. He made the captive monks and nuns +carry the scaling ladders; in this unwonted exploit the poor +religious folk lost many of their numbers. The wall was mounted, +the soldiers were defeated, though the Governor fought like a +Spaniard of the old school, slew many pirates with his own hand, and +pistolled some of his own men for cowardice. He died at his post, +refusing quarter, and falling like a gentleman of Spain. Morgan, +too, was not wanting in fortitude: he extorted 100,000 pieces-of- +eight from the Governor of Panama, and sent him a pistol as a sample +of the gun wherewith he took so great a city. He added that he +would return and take this pistol out of Panama; nor was he less +good than his word. In Cuba he divided 250,000 pieces-of-eight, and +a great booty in other treasure. A few weeks saw it all in the +hands of the tavern-keepers and women of the place. + +Morgan's next performance was a new sack of Maracaibo, now much +stronger than L'Olonnois had found it. After the most appalling +cruelties, not fit to be told, he returned, passing the castles at +the mouth of the port by an ingenious stratagem. Running boatload +after boatload of men to the land side, he brought them back by +stealth, leading the garrison to expect an attack from that quarter. +The guns were massed to landward, and no sooner was this done than +Morgan sailed up through the channel with but little loss. Why the +Spaniards did not close the passage with a boom does not appear. +Probably they were glad to be quit of Morgan on any terms. + +A great Spanish fleet he routed by the ingenious employment of a +fire-ship. In a later expedition a strong place was taken by a +curious accident. One of the buccaneers was shot through the body +with an arrow. He drew it out, wrapped it in cotton, fired it from +his musket, and so set light to a roof and burned the town. + +His raid on Panama was extraordinary for the endurance of his men. +For days they lived on the leather of bottles and belts. "Some, who +were never out of their mothers' kitchens, may ask how these pirates +could eat and digest these pieces of leather, so hard and dry? Whom +I answer--that could they once experience what hunger, or rather +famine is, they would find the way, as the pirates did." It was at +the close of this march that the Indians drove wild bulls among +them; but they cared very little for these new allies of the +Spaniards: beef, in any form, was only too welcome. + +Morgan burned the fair cedar houses of Panama, but lost the plate +ship with all the gold and silver out of the churches. How he +tortured a poor wretch who chanced to wear a pair of taffety +trousers belonging to his master, with a small silver key hanging +out, it is better not to repeat. The men only got two hundred +pieces-of-eight each, after all their toil, for their Welshman was +indeed a thief, and bilked his crews, no less than he plundered the +Spaniards, without remorse. Finally, he sneaked away from the fleet +with a ship or two; and it is to be feared that Captain Morgan made +rather a good thing by dint of his incredible cruelty and villainy. + +And so we leave Mr. Esquemeling, whom Captain Morgan also deserted; +for who would linger long when there is not even honour among +thieves? Alluring as the pirate's profession is, we must not forget +that it had a seamy side, and was by no means all rum and pieces-of- +eight. And there is something repulsive to a generous nature in +roasting men because they will not show you where to steal hogs. + + + +THE SAGAS + + + +"The general reader," says a frank critic, "hates the very name of a +Saga." The general reader, in that case, is to be pitied, and, if +possible, converted. But, just as Pascal admits that the sceptic +can only become religious by living as if he WERE religious--by +stupefying himself, as Pascal plainly puts it, with holy water--so +it is to be feared that there is but a single way of winning over +the general reader to the Sagas. Preaching and example, as in this +brief essay, will not avail with him. He must take Pascal's advice, +and live for an hour or two as if he were a lover of Sagas. He +must, in brief, give that old literature a fair chance. He has now +his opportunity: Mr. William Morris and Mr. Eirikr Magnusson are +publishing a series of cheap translations--cheap only in coin of the +realm--a Saga Library. If a general reader tries the first tale in +the first volume, story of "Howard the Halt,"--if he tries it +honestly, and still can make no way with it, then let him take +comfort in the doctrine of Invincible Ignorance. Let him go back to +his favourite literature of gossiping reminiscence, or of realistic +novels. We have all, probably, a drop of the Northmen's blood in +us, but in that general reader the blood is dormant. + +What is a Saga? It is neither quite a piece of history nor wholly a +romance. It is a very old story of things and adventures that +really happened, but happened so long ago, and in times so +superstitious, that marvels and miracles found their way into the +legend. The best Sagas are those of Iceland, and those, in +translations, are the finest reading that the natural man can +desire. If you want true pictures of life and character, which are +always the same at bottom, or true pictures of manners, which are +always changing, and of strange customs and lost beliefs, in the +Sagas they are to be found. Or if you like tales of enterprise, of +fighting by land and sea, fighting with men and beasts, with storms +and ghosts and fiends, the Sagas are full of this entertainment. + +The stories of which we are speaking were first told in Iceland, +perhaps from 950 to 1100 B.C. When Norway and Sweden were still +heathen, a thousand years ago, they were possessed by families of +noble birth, owning no master, and often at war with each other, +when the men were not sailing the seas, to rob and kill in Scotland, +England, France, Italy, and away east as far as Constantinople, or +farther. Though they were wild sea robbers and warriors, they were +sturdy farmers, great shipbuilders; every man of them, however +wealthy, could be his own carpenter, smith, shipwright, and +ploughman. They forged their own good short swords, hammered their +own armour, ploughed their own fields. In short, they lived like +Odysseus, the hero of Homer, and were equally skilled in the arts of +war and peace. They were mighty lawyers, too, and had a most +curious and minute system of laws on all subjects--land, marriage, +murder, trade, and so forth. These laws were not written, though +the people had a kind of letters called runes. But they did not use +them much for documents, but merely for carving a name on a sword- +blade, or a tombstone, or on great gold rings such as they wore on +their arms. Thus the laws existed in the memory and judgment of the +oldest and wisest and most righteous men of the country. The most +important was the law of murder. If one man slew another, he was +not tried by a jury, but any relation of the dead killed him "at +sight," wherever he found him. Even in an Earl's hall, Kari struck +the head off one of his friend Njal's Burners, and the head bounded +on the board, among the trenchers of meat and the cups of mead or +ale. But it was possible, if the relations of a slain man +consented, for the slayer to pay his price--every man was valued at +so much--and then revenge was not taken. But, as a rule, one +revenge called for another. Say Hrut slew Hrap, then Atli slew +Hrut, and Gisli slew Atli, and Kari slew Gisli, and so on till +perhaps two whole families were extinct and there was peace. The +gods were not offended by manslaughter openly done, but were angry +with treachery, cowardice, meanness, theft, perjury, and every kind +of shabbiness. + +This was the state of affairs in Norway when a king arose, Harold +Fair-Hair, who tried to bring all these proud people under him, and +to make them pay taxes and live more regularly and quietly. They +revolted at this, and when they were too weak to defy the king they +set sail and fled to Iceland. There in the lonely north, between +the snow and fire, the hot-water springs, the volcano of Hecla, the +great rivers full of salmon that rush down such falls as Golden +Foot, there they lived their old-fashioned life, cruising as pirates +and merchants, taking foreign service at Mickle Garth, or in England +or Egypt, filling the world with the sound of their swords and the +sky with the smoke of their burnings. For they feared neither God +nor man nor ghost, and were no less cruel than brave; the best of +soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the Zulus, who are a +kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them "Bersark's gang" +would fall--that is, they would become in a way mad, slaying all and +sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a furious strength +beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children when it +passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men's enemies, and to +kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The +women were worthy of the men--bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some +were loyal, like Bergthora, who foresaw how all her sons and her +husband were to be burned; but who would not leave them, and +perished in the burning without a cry. Some were as brave as +Howard's wife, who enabled her husband, old and childless, to +overthrow the wealthy bully, the slayer of his only son. Some were +treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she had, and was +the death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of +Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did a mean +thing, and he slapped her face. She never forgave him. At last +enemies besieged him in his house. The doors were locked--all was +quiet within. One of the enemies climbed up to a window slit, and +Gunnar thrust him through with his lance. "Is Gunnar at home?" said +the besiegers. "I know not--but his lance is," said the wounded +man, and died with that last jest on his lips. For long Gunnar kept +them at bay with his arrows, but at last one of them cut the arrow +string. "Twist me a string with thy hair," he said to his wife, +Halgerda, whose yellow hair was very long and beautiful. "Is it a +matter of thy life or death?" she asked. "Ay," he said. "Then I +remember that blow thou gavest me, and I will see thy death." So +Gunnar died, overcome by numbers, and they killed Samr, his hound, +but not before Samr had killed a man. + +So they lived always with sword or axe in hand--so they lived, and +fought, and died. + +Then Christianity was brought to them from Norway by Thangbrand, and +if any man said he did not believe a word of it, Thangbrand had the +schoolboy argument, "Will you fight?" So they fought a duel on a +holm or island, that nobody might interfere--holm-gang they called +it--and Thangbrand usually killed his man. In Norway, Saint Olaf +did the like, killing and torturing those who held by the old gods-- +Thor, Odin, and Freya, and the rest. So, partly by force and partly +because they were somewhat tired of bloodshed, horsefights, and the +rest, they received the word of the white Christ and were baptised, +and lived by written law, and did not avenge themselves by their own +hands. + +They were Christians now, but they did not forget the old times, the +old feuds and fightings and Bersarks, and dealings with ghosts, and +with dead bodies that arose and wrought horrible things, haunting +houses and strangling men. The Icelandic ghosts were able-bodied, +well "materialised," and Grettir and Olaf Howard's son fought them +with strength of arm and edge of steel. TRUE stories of the ancient +days were told at the fireside in the endless winter nights by story +tellers or Scalds. It was thought a sin for any one to alter these +old stories, but as generations passed more and more wonderful +matters came into the legend. It was believed that the dead Gunnar, +the famed archer, sang within his cairn or "Howe," the mound wherein +he was buried, and his famous bill or cutting spear was said to have +been made by magic, and to sing in the night before the wounding of +men and the waking of war. People were thought to be "second- +sighted"--that is, to have prophetic vision. The night when Njal's +house was burned his wife saw all the meat on the table "one gore of +blood," just as in Homer the prophet Theoclymenus beheld blood +falling in gouts from the walls, before the slaying of the Wooers. +The Valkyries, the Choosers of the slain, and the Norns who wove the +fates of men at a ghastly loom were seen by living eyes. In the +graves where treasures were hoarded the Barrowwights dwelt, ghosts +that were sentinels over the gold: witchwives changed themselves +into wolves and other monstrous animals, and for many weeks the +heroes Signy and Sinfjotli ran wild in the guise of wolves. + +These and many other marvels crept into the Sagas, and made the +listeners feel a shudder of cold beside the great fire that burned +in the centre of the skali or hall where the chief sat, giving meat +and drink to all who came, where the women span and the Saga man +told the tales of long ago. Finally, at the end of the middle ages, +these Sagas were written down in Icelandic, and in Latin +occasionally, and many of them have been translated into English. + +Unluckily, these translations have hitherto been expensive to buy, +and were not always to be had easily. For the wise world, which +reads newspapers all day and half the night, does not care much for +books, still less for good books, least of all for old books. You +can make no money out of reading Sagas: they have nothing to say +about stocks and shares, nor about Prime Ministers and politics. +Nor will they amuse a man, if nothing amuses him but accounts of +races and murders, or gossip about Mrs. Nokes's new novel, Mrs. +Stokes's new dresses, or Lady Jones's diamonds. The Sagas only tell +how brave men--of our own blood very likely--lived, and loved, and +fought, and voyaged, and died, before there was much reading or +writing, when they sailed without steam, travelled without railways, +and warred hand-to-hand, not with hidden dynamite and sunk +torpedoes. But, for stories of gallant life and honest purpose, the +Sagas are among the best in the world. + +Of Sagas in English one of the best is the "Volsunga," the story of +the Niflungs and Volsungs. This book, thanks to Mr. William Morris, +can be bought for a shilling. It is a strange tale in which gods +have their parts, the tale of that oldest Treasure Hunt, the Hunt +for the gold of the dwarf Andvari. This was guarded by the serpent, +Fafnir, who had once been a man, and who was killed by the hero +Sigurd. But Andvari had cursed the gold, because his enemies robbed +him of it to the very last ring, and had no pity. Then the brave +Sigurd was involved in the evil luck. He it was who rode through +the fire, and woke the fair enchanted Brynhild, the Shield-maiden. +And she loved him, and he her, with all their hearts, always to the +death. But by ill fate she was married to another man, Sigurd's +chief friend, and Sigurd to another woman. And the women fell to +jealousy and quarrelling as women will, and they dragged the friends +into the feud, and one manslaying after another befell, till that +great murder of men in the Hall of Atli, the King. The curse came +on one and all of them--a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of +witchwork destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in +one red ruin. + +The "Volsunga Saga" has this unique and unparalleled interest, that +it gives the spectacle of the highest epic genius, struggling out of +savagery into complete and free and conscious humanity. It is a +mark of the savage intellect not to discriminate abruptly between +man and the lower animals. In the tales of the lower peoples, the +characters are just as often beasts as men and women. Now, in the +earlier and wilder parts of the "Volsunga Saga," otters and dragons +play human parts. Signy and his son, and the mother of their enemy, +put on the skins of wolves, become wolves, and pass through hideous +adventures. The story reeks with blood, and ravins with lust of +blood. But when Sigurd arrives at full years of manhood, the +barbarism yields place, the Saga becomes human and conscious. + +These legends deal little with love. But in the "Volsunga Saga" the +permanent interest is the true and deathless love of Sigurd and +Brynhild: their separation by magic arts, the revival of their +passion too late, the man's resigned and heroic acquiescence, the +fiercer passion of the woman, who will neither bear her fate nor +accept her bliss at the price of honour and her plighted word. + +The situation, the nodus, is neither ancient merely nor modern +merely, but of all time. Sigurd, having at last discovered the net +in which he was trapped, was content to make the best of marriage +and of friendship. Brynhild was not. "The hearts of women are the +hearts of wolves," says the ancient Sanskrit commentary on the Rig +Veda. But the she-wolf's heart broke, like a woman's, when she had +caused Sigurd's slaying. Both man and woman face life, as they +conceive it, with eyes perfectly clear. + +The magic and the supernatural wiles are accidental, the human heart +is essential and eternal. There is no scene like this in the epics +of Greece. This is a passion that Homer did not dwell upon. In the +Iliad and Odyssey the repentance of Helen is facile; she takes life +easily. Clytemnestra is not brought on the stage to speak for +herself. In this respect the epic of the North, without the charm +and the delightfulness of the Southern epic, excels it; in this and +in a certain bare veracity, but in nothing else. We cannot put the +Germanic legend on the level of the Greek, for variety, for many- +sided wisdom, for changing beauty of a thousand colours. But in +this one passion of love the "Volsunga Saga" excels the Iliad. + +The Greek and the Northern stories are alike in one thing. Fate is +all-powerful over gods and men. Odin cannot save Balder; nor +Thetis, Achilles; nor Zeus, Sarpedon. But in the Sagas fate is more +constantly present to the mind. Much is thought of being "lucky," +or "unlucky." Howard's "good luck" is to be read in his face by the +wise, even when, to the common gaze, he seems a half-paralytic +dotard, dying of grief and age. + +Fate and evil luck dog the heroes of the Sagas. They seldom "end +well," as people say,--unless, when a brave man lies down to die on +the bed he has strewn of the bodies of his foes, you call THAT +ending well. So died Grettir the Strong. Even from a boy he was +strong and passionate, short of temper, quick of stroke, but loyal, +brave, and always unlucky. His worst luck began after he slew Glam. +This Glam was a wicked heathen herdsman, who would not fast on +Christmas Eve. So on the hills his dead body was found, swollen as +great as an ox, and as blue as death. + +What killed him they did not know. But he haunted the farmhouse, +riding the roof, kicking the sides with his heels, killing cattle +and destroying all things. Then Grettir came that way, and he slept +in the hall. At night the dead Glam came in, and Grettir arose, and +to it they went, struggling and dashing the furniture to bits. Glam +even dragged Grettir to the door, that he might slay him under the +sky, and for all his force Grettir yielded ground. Then on the very +threshold he suddenly gave way when Glam was pulling hardest, and +they fell, Glam undermost. Then Grettir drew the short sword, +"Kari's loom," that he had taken from a haunted grave, and stabbed +the dead thing that had lived again. But, as Glam lay a-dying in +the second death, the moon fell on his awful eyes, and Grettir saw +the horror of them, and from that hour he could not endure to be in +the dark, and he never dared to go alone. This was his death, for +he had an evil companion who betrayed him to his enemies; but when +they set on Grettir, though he was tired and sick of a wound, many +died with him. No man died like Grettir the Strong, nor slew so +many in his death. + +Besides those Sagas, there is the best of all, but the longest, +"Njala" (pronounced "Nyoula"), the story of Burnt Njal. That is too +long to sketch here, but it tells how, through the hard hearts and +jealousy of women, ruin came at last on the gentle Gunnar, and the +reckless Skarphedin of the axe, "The Ogress of War," and how Njal, +the wisest, the most peaceful, the most righteous of men, was burned +with all his house, and how that evil deed was avenged on the +Burners of Kari. + +The site of Njal's house is yet to be seen, after these nine hundred +years, and the little glen where Kari hid when he leaped through the +smoke and the flame that made his sword-blade blue. Yes, the very +black sand that Bergthora and her maids threw on the fire lies there +yet, and remnants of the whey they cast on the flames, when water +failed them. They were still there beneath the earth when an +English traveller dug up some of the ground last year, and it is +said that an American gentleman found a gold ring in the house of +Njal. The story of him and of his brave sons, and of his slaves, +and of his kindred, and of Queens and Kings of Norway, and of the +coming of the white Christ, are all in the "Njala." That and the +other Sagas would bear being shortened for general readers; once +they were all that the people had by way of books, and they liked +them long. But, shortened or not, they are brave books for men, for +the world is a place of battle still, and life is war. These old +heroes knew it, and did not shirk it, but fought it out, and left +honourable names and a glory that widens year by year. For the +story of Njal and Gunnar and Skarphedin was told by Captain Speedy +to the guards of Theodore, King of Abyssinia. They liked it well; +and with queer altered names and changes of the tale, that Saga will +be told in Abyssinia, and thence carried all through Africa where +white men have never wandered. So wide, so long-enduring a renown +could be given by a nameless Sagaman. + + + +CHARLES KINGSLEY + + + +When I was very young, a distinguished Review was still younger. I +remember reading one of the earliest numbers, being then myself a +boy of ten, and coming on a review of a novel. Never, as it seemed +to me, or seems to my memory, was a poor novel more heavily handled: +and yet I felt that the book must be a book to read on the very +earliest opportunity. It was "Westward Ho!" the most famous, and +perhaps the best novel, of Charles Kingsley. Often one has read it +since, and it is an example of those large, rich, well-fed romances, +at which you can cut and come again, as it were, laying it down, and +taking it up on occasion, with the certainty of being excited, +amused--and preached at. + +Lately I have re-read "Westward Ho!" and some of Kingsley's other +books, "Hypatia," "Hereward the Wake," and the poems, over again. +The old pleasure in them is not gone indeed, but it is modified. +One must be a boy to think Kingsley a humourist. At the age of +twelve or ten you take the comic passages which he conscientiously +provides, without being vexed or offended; you take them merely in +the way of business. Better things are coming: struggles with the +Inquisition, storms at sea, duels, the Armada, wanderings in the +Lotus land of the tropical west; and for the sake of all this a boy +puts up good-naturedly with Kingsley's humour. Perhaps he even +grins over Amyas "burying alternately his face in the pasty and the +pasty in his face," or he tries to feel diverted by the Elizabethan +waggeries of Frank. But there is no fun in them--they are +mechanical; they are worse than the humours of Scott's Sir Percy +Shafto, which are not fine. + +The same sense of everything not being quite so excellent as one +remembered it haunts one in "Hereward the Wake, the Last of the +English." Kingsley calls him "the Last of the English," but he is +really the first of the literary Vikings. In the essay on the Sagas +here I have tried to show, very imperfectly, what the Norsemen were +actually like. They caught Kingsley's fancy, and his "Hereward," +though born on English soil, is really Norse--not English. But +Kingsley did not write about the Vikings, nor about his Elizabethan +heroes in "Westward Ho!" in a perfectly simple, straightforward way. +He was always thinking of our own times and referring to them. That +is why even the rather ruffianly Hereward is so great an enemy of +saints and monks. That is why, in "Hypatia" (which opens so well), +we have those prodigiously dull, stupid, pedantic, and conceited +reflections of Raphael Ben Ezra. That is why, in all Kingsley's +novels, he is perpetually exciting himself in defence of marriage +and the family life, as if any monkish ideas about the blessedness +of bachelorhood were ever likely to drive the great Anglo-Saxon race +into convents and monasteries. That is the very last thing we have +to be afraid of; but Kingsley was afraid of it, and was eternally +attacking everything Popish and monkish. + +Boys and young people, then, can read "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia," +and "Hereward the Wake," with far more pleasure than their elders. +They hurry on with the adventures, and do not stop to ask what the +moralisings mean. They forgive the humour of Kingsley because it is +well meant. They get, in short, the real good of this really great +and noble and manly and blundering genius. They take pleasure in +his love of strong men, gallant fights, desperate encounters with +human foes, with raging seas, with pestilence, or in haunted +forests. For in all that is good of his talent--in his courage, his +frank speech, his love of sport, his clear eyes, his devotion to +field and wood, river, moor, sea, and storms--Kingsley is a boy. He +has the brave, rather hasty, and not over well-informed enthusiasm +of sixteen, for persons and for causes. He saw an opponent (it +might be Father Newman): his heart lusted for a fight; he called +his opponent names, he threw his cap into the ring, he took his coat +off, he fought, he got a terrible scientific drubbing. It was like +a sixth-form boy matching himself against the champion. And then he +bore no malice. He took his defeat bravely. Nay, are we not left +with a confused feeling that he was not far in the wrong, though he +had so much the worse of the fight? + +Such was Kingsley: a man with a boy's heart; a hater of cruelty and +injustice, and also with a brave, indomitable belief that his own +country and his own cause were generally in the right, whatever the +quarrel. He loved England like a mistress, and hated her enemies, +Spain and the Pope, though even in them he saw the good. He is for +ever scolding the Spanish for their cruelties to the Indians, but he +defends our doings to the Irish, which (at that time) were neither +more nor less oppressive than the Spanish performances in America. +"Go it, our side!" you always hear this good Kingsley crying; and +one's heart goes out to him for it, in an age when everybody often +proves his own country to be in the wrong. + +Simple, brave, resolute, manly, a little given to "robustiousness," +Kingsley transfigured all these qualities by possessing the soul and +the heart of a poet. He was not a very great poet, indeed, but a +true poet--one of the very small band who are cut off, by a gulf +that can never be passed, from mere writers of verse, however +clever, educated, melodious, ingenious, amiable, and refined. He +had the real spark of fire, the true note; though the spark might +seldom break into flame, and the note was not always clear. Never +let us confuse true poets with writers of verse, still less with +writers of "poetic prose." Kingsley wrote a great deal of that- +perhaps too much: his descriptions of scenes are not always as good +as in Hereward's ride round the Fens, or when the tall, Spanish +galleon staggers from the revenge of man to the vengeance of God, to +her doom through the mist, to her rest in the sea. Perhaps only a +poet could have written that prose; it is certain no writer of +"poetic prose" could have written Kingsley's poems. + +His songs are his best things; they really are songs, not merely +lyric poems. They have the merit of being truly popular, whether +they are romantic, like "The Sands o' Dee," which actually +reproduces the best qualities of the old ballad; or whether they are +pathetic, like the "Doll's Song," in "Water Babies"; or whether they +attack an abuse, as in the song of "The Merry Brown Hares"; or +whether they soar higher, as in "Deep, deep Love, within thine own +abyss abiding"; or whether they are mere noble nonsense, as in +"Lorraine Loree":- + + +"She mastered young Vindictive; oh, the gallant lass was she, +And kept him straight and won the race, as near as near could be; +But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree; +Oh, he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see, +And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine Loree." + + +The truth about Charles Kingsley seems to be that he rather made a +brave and cheery noise in this night-battle of modern life, than +that he directed any movement of forces. He kept cheering, as it +were, and waving his sword with a contagious enthusiasm. Being a +poet, and a man both of heart and of sentiment, he was equally +attached to the best things of the old world and to the best of the +new world, as far as one can forecast what it is to be. He loved +the stately homes of England, the ancient graduated order of +society, the sports of the past, the military triumphs, the +patriotic glories. But he was also on the side of the poor: as +"Parson Lot" he attempted to be a Christian Socialist. + +Now, the Socialists are the people who want to take everything; the +Christians are the persons who do not want to give more than they +find convenient. Kingsley himself was ready to give, and did give, +his time, his labour, his health, and probably his money, to the +poor. But he was by no means minded that they should swallow up the +old England with church and castle, manor-house and tower, wealth, +beauty, learning, refinement. The man who wrote "Alton Locke," the +story of the starved tailor-poet, was the man who nearly wept when +he heard a fox bark, and reflected that the days of fox-hunting were +numbered. He had a poet's politics, Colonel Newcome's politics. He +was for England, for the poor, for the rich, for the storied houses +of the chivalrous past, for the cottage, for the hall; and was dead +against the ideas of Manchester, and of Mr. John Bright. "My +father," he says in a letter, "would have put his hand to a spade or +an axe with any man, and so could I pretty well, too, when I was in +my prime; and my eldest son is now working with his own hands at +farming, previous to emigrating to South America, where he will do +the drudgery of his own cattle-pens and sheepfolds; and if I were +twenty-four and unmarried I would go out there too, and work like an +Englishman, and live by the sweat of my brow." + +This was the right side of his love of the Vikings; it was thus THEY +lived, when not at war--thus that every gentleman who has youth and +health should work, winning new worlds for his class, in place of +this miserable, over-crowded, brawling England. This, I think, was, +or should have been, the real lesson and message of Kingsley for the +generations to come. Like Scott the scion of an old knightly line, +he had that drop of wild blood which drives men from town into the +air and the desert, wherever there are savage lands to conquer, +beasts to hunt, and a hardy life to be lived. But he was the son of +a clergyman, and a clergyman himself. The spirit that should have +gone into action went into talking, preaching, writing--all sources +of great pleasure to thousands of people, and so not wasted. Yet +these were not the natural outlets of Kingsley's life: he should +have been a soldier, or an explorer; at least, we may believe that +he would have preferred such fortune. He did his best, the best he +knew, and it is all on the side of manliness, courage, kindness. +Perhaps he tried too many things--science, history, fairy tales, +religious and political discussions, romance, poetry. Poetry was +what he did best, romance next; his science and his history are +entertaining, but without authority. + +This, when one reads it again, seems a cold, unfriendly estimate of +a man so ardent and so genuine, a writer so vivacious and courageous +as Kingsley. Even the elderly reviewer bears to him, and to his +brother Henry, a debt he owes to few of their generation. The truth +is we should READ Kingsley; we must not criticise him. We must +accept him and be glad of him, as we accept a windy, sunny autumn +day--beautiful and blusterous--to be enjoyed and struggled with. If +once we stop and reflect, and hesitate, he seems to preach too much, +and with a confidence which his knowledge of the world and of +history does not justify. To be at one with Kingsley we must be +boys again, and that momentary change cannot but be good for us. +Soon enough--too soon--we shall drop back on manhood, and on all the +difficulties and dragons that Kingsley drove away by a blast on his +chivalrous and cheery horn. + + + +CHARLES LEVER: HIS BOOKS, ADVENTURES AND MISFORTUNES + + + +Surely it is a pleasant thing that there are books, like other +enjoyments, for all ages. You would not have a boy prefer whist to +fives, nor tobacco to toffee, nor Tolstoi to Charles Lever. The +ancients reckoned Tyrtaecus a fine poet, not that he was +particularly melodious or reflective, but that he gave men heart to +fight for their country. Charles Lever has done as much. In his +biography, by Mr. Fitzpatrick, it is told that a widow lady had but +one son, and for him she obtained an appointment at Woolwich. The +boy was timid and nervous, and she fancied that she must find for +him some other profession--perhaps that of literature. But he one +day chanced on Lever's novels, and they put so much heart into him +that his character quite altered, and he became the bravest of the +brave. + +Lever may not do as much for every one, but he does teach contempt +of danger, or rather, delight in it: a gay, spontaneous, boyish +kind of courage--Irish courage at its best. We may get more good +from that than harm from all his tales of much punch and many +drinking bouts. These are no longer in fashion and are not very gay +reading, perhaps, but his stories and songs, his duels and battles +and hunting scenes are as merry and as good as ever. Wild as they +seem in the reading, they are not far from the truth, as may be +gathered out of "Barrington's Memoirs," and their tales of the +reckless Irish life some eighty years ago. + +There were two men in Charles Lever--a glad man and a sad man. The +gaiety was for his youth, when he poured out his "Lorrequers" and +"O'Malleys," all the mirth and memories of his boyhood, all the +tales of fighting and feasting he gleaned from battered, seasoned +old warriors, like Major Monsoon. Even then, Mr. Thackeray, who +knew him, and liked and laughed at him, recognised through his +merriment "the fund of sadness beneath." "The author's character is +NOT humour, but sentiment . . . extreme delicacy, sweetness and +kindliness of heart. The spirits are mostly artificial, the fond is +sadness, as appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and +people." Even in "Charles O'Malley," what a true, dark picture +that is of the duel beside the broad, angry river on the level waste +under the wide grey sky! Charles has shot his opponent, Bodkin, and +with Considine, his second, is making his escape. "Considine cried +out suddenly, 'Too infamous, by Jove: we are murdered men!'" + +"'What do you mean?' said I. + +"'Don't you see that?' said he, pointing to something black which +floated from a pole at the opposite side of the river. + +"'Yes; what is it?' + +"'It's his coat they've put upon an oar, to show the people he's +killed--that's all. Every man here's his tenant; and look there! +they're not giving us much doubt as to their intentions.' + +"Here a tremendous yell burst forth from the mass of people along +the shore, which, rising to a terrific cry, sank gradually down to a +low wailing, then rose and fell several times, as the Irish death- +cry filled the air, and rose to heaven, as if imploring vengeance on +a murderer." + +Passages like this, and that which follows--the dangerous voyage +through the storm on the flooded Shannon, and through the reefs--are +what Mr. Thackeray may have had in his mind when he spoke of Lever's +underlying melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he +had hours of gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were +in him came forth then and informed his later books. These are far +more carefully written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old +chapters written from month to month as the fit took him, with no +more plan or premeditation than "Pickwick." But it is the early +stories that we remember, and that he lives by--the pages thrown off +at a heat, when he was a lively doctor with few patients, and was +not over-attentive to them. These were the days of Harry Lorrequer +and Tom Burke; characters that ran away with him, and took their own +path through a merry world of diversion. Like the knights in Sir +Thomas Malory, these heroes "ride at adventure," ride amazing horses +that dread no leap, be it an Irish stone wall on a mountain crest, +or be it the bayonets of a French square. + +Mr. Lever's biographer has not been wholly successful in pleasing +the critics, and he does not seem to affect very critical airs +himself, but he tells a straightforward tale. The life of Charles +Lever is the natural commentary on his novels. He was born at +Dublin in 1806, the son of a builder or architect. At school he was +very much flogged, and the odds are that he deserved these +attentions, for he had high spirits beyond the patience of dominies. +Handsome, merry and clever, he read novels in school hours, wore a +ring, and set up as a dandy. Even then he was in love with the +young lady whom he married in the end. At a fight with boys of +another school, he and a friend placed a mine under the ground +occupied by the enemy, and blew them, more or less, into the air. +Many an eyebrow was singed off on that fatal day, when, for the only +time, this romancer of the wars "smelled powder." He afterwards +pleaded for his party before the worthy police magistrate, and +showed great promise as a barrister. At Trinity College, Dublin, he +was full of his fun, made ballads, sang them through the streets in +disguise (like Fergusson, the Scottish poet), and one night +collected thirty shillings in coppers. + +The original of Frank Webber, in "Charles O'Malley," was a chum of +his, and he took part in the wonderful practical jokes which he has +made immortal in that novel. + +From Trinity College, Dublin, Lever went to Gottingen, where he +found fun and fighting enough among the German students. From that +hour he became a citizen of the world, or, at least, of Europe, and +perhaps, like the prophets, was most honoured when out of his own +country. He returned to Dublin and took his degree in medicine, +after playing a famous practical joke. A certain medical professor +was wont to lecture in bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. +Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, +slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class +himself. On another day he was standing outside the Foundling +Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind of stone cradle +for foundlings was built outside the door, and, when a baby was +placed therein, a bell rang. Lever lifted up his friend, popped him +into the cradle, and had the joy of seeing the promising infant +picked out by the porter. + +It seems a queer education for a man of letters; but, like Sir +Walter Scott when revelling in Liddesdale, he "was making himself +all the time." He was collecting myriads of odd experiences and +treasures of anecdotes; he was learning to know men of all sorts; +and later, as a country doctor, he had experiences of mess tables, +of hunting, and of all the ways of his remarkable countrymen. When +cholera visited his district he stuck to his work like a man of +heart and courage. But the usual tasks of a country doctor wearied +him; he neglected them, he became unpopular with the authorities, he +married his first love and returned to Brussels, where he practised +as a physician. He had already begun his first notable book, "Harry +Lorrequer," in the University Magazine. It is merely a string of +Irish and other stories, good, bad, and indifferent--a picture +gallery full of portraits of priests, soldiers, peasants and odd +characters. The plot is of no importance; we are not interested in +Harry's love affairs, but in his scrapes, adventures, duels at home +and abroad. He fights people by mistake whom he does not know by +sight, he appears on parade with his face blackened, he wins large +piles at trente et quarante, he disposes of coopers of claret and +bowls of punch, and the sheep on a thousand hills provide him with +devilled kidneys. The critics and the authors thought little of the +merry medley, but the public enjoyed it, and defied the reviewers. +One paper preferred the book to a wilderness of "Pickwicks"; and as +this opinion was advertised everywhere by M'Glashan, the publisher, +Mr. Dickens was very much annoyed indeed. Authors are easily +annoyed. But Lever writes ut placeat pueris, and there was a +tremendous fight at Rugby between two boys, the "Slogger Williams" +and "Tom Brown" of the period, for the possession of "Harry +Lorrequer." When an author has the boys of England on his side, he +can laugh at the critics. Not that Lever laughed: he, too, was +easily vexed, and much depressed, when the reviews assailed him. +Next he began "Charles O'Malley"; and if any man reads this essay +who has not read the "Irish Dragoon," let him begin at once. +"O'Malley" is what you can recommend to a friend. Here is every +species of diversion: duels and steeplechases, practical jokes at +college (good practical jokes, not booby traps and apple-pie beds); +here is fighting in the Peninsula. If any student is in doubt, let +him try chapter xiv.--the battle on the Douro. This is, indeed, +excellent military writing, and need not fear comparison as art with +Napier's famous history. Lever has warmed to his work; his heart is +in it; he had the best information from an eye-witness; and the +brief beginning, on the peace of nature before the strife of men, is +admirably poetical. + +To reach the French, under Soult, Wellesley had to cross the deep +and rapid Douro, in face of their fire, and without regular +transport. "He dared the deed. What must have been his confidence +in the men he commanded! what must have been his reliance on his own +genius!" + +You hold your breath as you read, while English and Germans charge, +till at last the field is won, and the dust of the French columns +retreating in the distance blows down the road to Spain. + +The Great Duke read this passage, and marvelled how Lever knew +certain things that he tells. He learned this, and much more, the +humours of war, from the original of Major Monsoon. Falstaff is +alone in the literature of the world, but if ever there came a later +Falstaff, Monsoon was the man. And where have you such an Irish +Sancho Panza as Micky Free, that independent minstrel, or such an +Irish Di Vernon as Baby Blake? The critics may praise Lever's +thoughtful and careful later novels as they will, but "Charles +O'Malley" will always be the pattern of a military romance. The +anecdote of "a virtuous weakness" in O'Shaughnessy's father's +character would alone make the fortune of many a story. The truth +is, it is not easy to lay down "Charles O'Malley," to leave off +reading it, and get on with the account of Lever. + +His excellent and delightful novel scarcely received one favourable +notice from the press. This may have been because it was so +popular; but Lever became so nervous that he did not like to look at +the papers. When he went back to Dublin and edited a magazine +there, he was more fiercely assailed than ever. It is difficult for +an Irishman to write about the Irish, or for a Scot to write about +the Scottish, without hurting the feelings of his countrymen. While +their literary brethren are alive they are not very dear to the +newspaper scribes of these gallant nations; and thus Jeffrey was +more severe to Scott than he need have been, while the Irish press, +it appears, made an onslaught on Lever. Mr. Thackeray met Lever in +Dublin, and he mentions this unkind behaviour. "Lorrequer's +military propensities have been objected to strongly by his +squeamish Hibernian brethren . . . But is Lorrequer the only man in +Ireland who is fond of military spectacles? Why does the Nation +publish these edifying and Christian war songs? . . . And who is it +that prates about the Irish at Waterloo, and the Irish at Fontenoy, +and the Irish at Seringapatam, and the Irish at Timbuctoo? If Mr. +O'Connell, like a wise rhetorician, chooses, and very properly, to +flatter the national military passion, why not Harry Lorrequer?" + +Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of +letters, and a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest +Doolan and his friends, were not successful. That is the humour of +it. + +Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones +because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap," +nor Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you +rather admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very +differently when you come to thirty years or more, and see other men +doing what you cannot do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And +then, if you are a reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for +what it does not give," as thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:- + +"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in +geological information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and +worthless, for his facts are not borne out by any authority, and he +gives us no information about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh! +our country, our green and beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'" +and so forth. + +It was not altogether a happy time that Lever passed at home. Not +only did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom +Burke," that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of +authors. He edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of +wading through waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which +people are permitted to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust +there is in it to how few pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually +and politely. The office cat could edit the volunteered +contributions of many a magazine, but Lever was even more casual and +careless than an experienced office cat. He grew crabbed, and tried +to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that delightful parody "Phil +Fogarty," nearly as good as a genuine story by Lever. + +Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his style +(Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober--and not so +entertaining. He actually published a criticism of Beyle, of +Stendhal, that psychological prig, the darling of culture and of M. +Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on Stendhal!--it beggars belief. He +nearly fought a duel with the gentleman who is said to have +suggested Mr. Pecksniff to Dickens! Yet they call his early novels +improbable. Nothing could be less plausible than a combat between +Harry Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely, resembled the +father of Cherry and Merry. + +Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of Lucca, in +Trieste or Spezia, he passed the rest of his life. He saw the +Italian revolution of 1848, and it added to his melancholy. This is +plain from one of his novels with a curious history--"Con Cregan." +He wrote it at the same time as "The Daltons," and he did not sign +it. The reviewers praised "Con Cregan" at the expense of the signed +work, rejoicing that Lever, as "The Daltons" proved, was exhausted, +and that a new Irish author, the author of "Con Cregan," was coming +to eclipse him. In short, he eclipsed himself, and he did not like +it. His right hand was jealous of what his left hand did. It seems +odd that any human being, however dull and envious, failed to detect +Lever in the rapid and vivacious adventures of his Irish "Gil Blas," +hero of one of the very best among his books, a piece not unworthy +of Dumas. "Con" was written after midnight, "The Daltons" in the +morning; and there can be no doubt which set of hours was more +favourable to Lever's genius. Of course he liked "The Daltons" +best; of all people, authors appear to be their own worst critics. + +It is not possible even to catalogue Lever's later books here. +Again he drove a pair of novels abreast--"The Dodds" and "Sir Jasper +Carew"--which contain some of his most powerful situations. When +almost an old man, sad, outworn in body, straitened in +circumstances, he still produced excellent tales in this later +manner--"Lord Kilgobbin," "That Boy of Norcott's," "A Day's Ride," +and many more. These are the thoughts of a tired man of the world, +who has done and seen everything that such men see and do. He says +that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote for the grave and +the bald, not for the happier world which is young, and curly, and +merry. He died at last, it is said, in his sleep; and it is added +that he did what Harry Lorrequer would not have done--he left his +affairs in perfect order. + +Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, perhaps, he +is not prized as he should be. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, +Trollope, George Eliot, were his contemporaries. But when we turn +back and read him once more, we see that Lever, too, was a worthy +member of that famous company--a romancer for boys and men. + + + +THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT + + + +Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took +a fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle +of St. Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected +in the lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the +lapping of the water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from +the hill, and the pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. +So I read "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the +middle of the scenes where the story is laid and where the fights +were fought. For when the Baron went on pilgrimage, + + +"And took with him this elvish page +To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes," + +it was to the ruined chapel HERE that he came, + + +"For there, beside our Ladye's lake, +An offering he had sworn to make, +And he would pay his vows." + + +But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band, + + +"Of the best that would ride at her command," + + +and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady +lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of +lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, +is within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is +nearer still; and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the +heather, "where victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten +miles. These gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at +feud with the Kers, tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone +St. Mary of the Waves." + + +"They were three hundred spears and three. +Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream, +Their horses prance, their lances gleam. +They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day; +But the chapel was void, and the Baron away. +They burned the chapel for very rage, +And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page." + + +The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because +they failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I +read again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on +the lonely breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where +Yarrow flows, among the little green mounds that cover the ruins of +chapel and castle and lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir +Walter was indeed a great and delightful poet, or whether he pleases +me so much because I was born in his own country, and have one drop +of the blood of his Border robbers in my own veins? + +It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, +whom we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we +have changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was +"The Lady of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no +poet like Sir Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read +most of the world's poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott +is outworn and doomed to deserved oblivion. Are they right or +wrong, the critics who tell us, occasionally, that Scott's good +novels make up for his bad verse, or that verse and prose, all must +go? Pro captu lectoris, by the reader's taste, they stand or fall; +yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that the Waverley Novels are +mortal. They were once the joy of every class of minds; they cannot +cease to be the joy of those who cling to the permanently good, and +can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses, and the leisurely +literary fashion of a former age. But, as to the poems, many give +them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow that the poems +are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric and +narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has passed away +for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek; +by perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we +not to read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the +epics, nay, even of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into +vogue. This accounts for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's +lays. They are spoken of as Waverley Novels spoiled. This must +always be the opinion of readers who will not submit to stories in +verse; it by no means follows that the verse is bad. If we make an +exception, which we must, in favour of Chaucer, where is there +better verse in story telling in the whole of English literature? +The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of the Lake," do so +because they dislike stories told in poetry. From poetry they +expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic of +style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except +so far as life can be criticised in action, are alien to the Muse of +narrative. Stories and pictures are all she offers: Scott's +pictures, certainly, are fresh enough, his tales are excellent +enough, his manner is sufficiently direct. To take examples: every +one who wants to read Scott's poetry should begin with the "Lay." +From opening to close it never falters:- + + +"Nine and twenty knights of fame +Hung their shields in Branksome Hall; +Nine and twenty squires of name +Brought their steeds to bower from stall, +Nine and twenty yeomen tall +Waited, duteous, on them all . . . +Ten of them were sheathed in steel, +With belted sword, and spur on heel; +They quitted not their harness bright +Neither by day nor yet by night: +They lay down to rest +With corslet laced, +Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; +They carved at the meal +With gloves of steel, +And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred." + + +Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and +chime like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? +Then, when William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride +across the haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like +the heavy armoured horse? + + +"Unchallenged, thence passed Deloraine, +To ancient Riddell's fair domain, +Where Aill, from mountains freed, +Down from the lakes did raving come; +Each wave was crested with tawny foam, +Like the mane of a chestnut steed, +In vain! no torrent, deep or broad, +Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road; +At the first plunge the horse sunk low, +And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow." + + +These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy +plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence +Aill comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long +ago. This, of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal +bias towards admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and +stirs the spirit, even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of +Aill, that lies dark among the melancholy hills. + +The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of +Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses +the English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:- + + +"For the young heir of Branksome's line, +God be his aid, and God be mine; +Through me no friend shall meet his doom; +Here, while I live, no foe finds room. +Then if thy Lords their purpose urge, +Take our defiance loud and high; +Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge, +Our moat, the grave where they shall lie." + + +Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, +indeed, he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a +noble stanza on true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in +his "Mort d'Arthur"? Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of +his own unhappy and immortal affection:- + + +"True love's the gift which God has given +To man alone beneath the Heaven. +It is not Fantasy's hot fire, +Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly; +It liveth not in fierce desire, +With dead desire it dock not die: +It is the secret sympathy, +The silver link, the silken tie, +Which heart to heart and mind to mind, +In body and in soul can bind." + + +Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and +by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for +friend or foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you +want to learn lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as +the critics said at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard +priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; +it appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low +cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel's own +prophecy is true, and still, and always, + + +"Yarrow, as he rolls along, +Bears burden to the minstrel's song." + + +After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far +more ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse +written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he +took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His +friends reproved him, but he answered to one of them - + + +"Since oft thy judgment could refine +My flattened thought and cumbrous line, +Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, +And in the minstrel spare the friend: +Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, +Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale!" + + +Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and +gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West +wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse-- +forth from the far-off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the +same stormy sort, and many a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened +thought," you may note, if you will, in "Marmion." For example - + + +"And think what he must next have felt, +At buckling of the falchion belt." + + +The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" +might have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose +could never give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of +Flodden Fight in "Marmion," which I verily believe is the best +battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the +stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of +the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the hunting of +the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down valley, with +which the "Lady of the Lake" begins, opening thereby the enchanted +gates of the Highlands to the world. "The Lady of the Lake," except +in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid metre than that of the +"Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion." "Rokeby" lives only by +its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn, the "Field of +Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuirassiers. But all the poems are +interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of +"Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on THESE far more than on his +later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest +poets who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as +wild and free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy +carolled, or witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to +the world, music with no maker's name. For example, take the +Outlaw's rhyme - + + +"With burnished brand and musketoon, +So gallantly you come, +I read you for a bold dragoon +That lists the tuck of drum. +I list no more the tuck of drum, +No more the trumpet hear; +But when the beetle sounds his hum, +My comrades take the spear. +And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair, +And Greta woods be gay, +Yet mickle must the maiden dare, +Would reign my Queen of May!" + + +How musical, again, is this! - + + +"This morn is merry June, I trow, +The rose is budding fain; +But she shall bloom in winter snow, +Ere we two meet again. +He turned his charger as he spake, +Upon the river shore, +He gave his bridle-reins a shake, +Said, 'Adieu for evermore, +My love! +Adieu for evermore!'" + + +Turning from the legends in verse, let it not be forgotten that +Scott was a great lyrical poet. Mr. Palgrave is not too lenient a +judge, and his "Golden Treasury" is a touchstone, as well as a +treasure, of poetic gold. In this volume Wordsworth contributes +more lyrics than any other poet: Shelley and Shakespeare come next; +then Sir Walter. For my part I would gladly sacrifice a few of +Wordsworth's for a few more of Scott's. But this may be prejudice. +Mr. Palgrave is not prejudiced, and we see how high is his value for +Sir Walter. + +There are scores of songs in his works, touching and sad, or gay as +a hunter's waking, that tell of lovely things lost by tradition, and +found by him on the moors: all these--not prized by Sir Walter +himself--are in his gift, and in that of no other man. For example, +his "Eve of St. John" is simply a masterpiece, a ballad among +ballads. Nothing but an old song moves us like - + + +"Are these the links o' Forth, she said, +Are these the bends o' Dee!" + + +He might have done more of the best, had he very greatly cared. +Alone among poets, he had neither vanity nor jealousy; he thought +little of his own verse and his own fame: would that he had thought +more! would that he had been more careful of what was so precious! +But he turned to prose; bade poetry farewell. + + +"Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp, +Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway. +And little reck I of the censure sharp +May idly cavil at an idle lay." + + +People still cavil idly, complaining that Scott did not finish, or +did not polish his pieces; that he was not Keats, or was not +Wordsworth. He was himself; he was the Last Minstrel, the latest, +the greatest, the noblest of natural poets concerned with natural +things. He sang of free, fierce, and warlike life, of streams yet +rich in salmon, and moors not yet occupied by brewers; of lonely +places haunted in the long grey twilights of the North; of crumbling +towers where once dwelt the Lady of Branksome or the Flower of +Yarrow. Nature summed up in him many a past age a world of ancient +faiths; and before the great time of Britain wholly died, to +Britain, as to Greece, she gave her Homer. When he was old, and +tired, and near his death--so worn with trouble and labour that he +actually signed his own name wrong--he wrote his latest verse, for a +lady. It ends - + + +"My country, be thou glorious still!" + + +and so he died, within the sound of the whisper of Tweed, foreseeing +the years when his country would no more be glorious, thinking of +his country only, forgetting quite the private sorrow of his own +later days. + +People will tell you that Scott was not a great poet; that his bolt +is shot, his fame perishing. Little he cared for his fame! But for +my part I think and hope that Scott can never die, till men grow up +into manhood without ever having been boys--till they forget that + + +"One glorious hour of crowded life +Is worth an age without a name!" + + +Thus, the charges against Sir Walter's poetry are, on the whole, +little more than the old critical fallacy of blaming a thing for not +being something else. "It takes all sorts to make a world," in +poetry as in life. Sir Walter's sort is a very good sort, and in +English literature its place was empty, and waiting for him. Think +of what he did. English poetry had long been very tame and +commonplace, written in couplets like Pope's, very artificial and +smart, or sensible and slow. He came with poems of which the music +seemed to gallop, like thundering hoofs and ringing bridles of a +rushing border troop. Here were goblin, ghost, and fairy, fight and +foray, fair ladies and true lovers, gallant knights and hard blows, +blazing beacons on every hill crest and on the bartisan of every +tower. Here was a world made alive again that had been dead for +three hundred years--a world of men and women. + +They say that the archaeology is not good. Archaeology is a +science; in its application to poetry, Scott was its discoverer. +Others can name the plates of a coat of armour more learnedly than +he, but he made men wear them. They call his Gothic art false, his +armour pasteboard; but he put living men under his castled roofs, +living men into his breastplates and taslets. Science advances, old +knowledge becomes ignorance; it is poetry that does not die, and +that will not die, while - + + +"The triple pride +Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde." + + + +JOHN BUNYAN + + + +Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy's little daughter on his knee, +and asked her what she thought of the "Pilgrim's Progress." The +child answered that she had not read it. "No?" replied the Doctor; +"then I would not give one farthing for you," and he set her down +and took no further notice of her. + +This story, if true, proves that the Doctor was rather intolerant. +We must not excommunicate people because they have not our taste in +books. The majority of people do not care for books at all. + +There is a descendant of John Bunyan's alive now, or there was +lately, who never read the "Pilgrim's Progress." Books are not in +his line. Nay, Bunyan himself, who wrote sixty works, was no great +reader. An Oxford scholar who visited him in his study found no +books at all, except some of Bunyan's own and Foxe's "Book of +Martyrs." + +Yet, little as the world in general cares for reading, it has read +Bunyan more than most. One hundred thousand copies of the "Pilgrim" +are believed to have been sold in his own day, and the story has +been done into the most savage languages, as well as into those of +the civilised world. + +Dr. Johnson, who did not like Dissenters, praises the "invention, +imagination, and conduct of the story," and knew no other book he +wished longer except "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote." Well, Dr. +Johnson would not have given a farthing for ME, as I am quite +contented with the present length of these masterpieces. What books +do YOU wish longer? I wish Homer had written a continuation of the +Odyssey, and told us what Odysseus did among the far-off men who +never tasted salt nor heard of the sea. A land epic after the sea +epic, how good it would have been--from Homer! But it would have +taxed the imagination of Dante to continue the adventures of +Christian and his wife after they had once crossed the river and +reached the city. + +John Bunyan has been more fortunate than most authors in one of his +biographies. + +His life has been written by the Rev. Dr. Brown, who is now minister +of his old congregation at Bedford; and an excellent life it is. +Dr. Brown is neither Roundhead nor Cavalier; for though he is, of +course, on Bunyan's side, he does not throw stones at the beautiful +Church of England. + +Probably most of us are on Bunyan's side now. It might be a good +thing that we should all dwell together in religious unity, but +history shows that people cannot be bribed into brotherhood. They +tried to bully Bunyan; they arrested and imprisoned him--unfairly +even in law, according to Dr. Brown, not unfairly, Mr. Froude +thinks--and he would not be bullied. + +What was much more extraordinary, he would not be embittered. In +spite of all, he still called Charles II. "a gracious Prince." When +a subject is in conscience at variance with the law, Bunyan said, he +has but one course--to accept peaceably the punishment which the law +awards. He was never soured, never angered by twelve years of +durance, not exactly in a loathsome dungeon, but in very +uncomfortable quarters. When there came a brief interval of +toleration, he did not occupy himself in brawling, but in preaching, +and looking after the manners and morals of the little "church," +including one woman who brought disagreeable charges against +"Brother Honeylove." The church decided that there was nothing in +the charges, but somehow the name of Brother Honeylove does not +inspire confidence. + +Almost everybody knows the main facts of Bunyan's life. They may +not know that he was of Norman descent (as Dr. Brown seems to +succeed in proving), nor that the Bunyans came over with the +Conqueror, nor that he was a gipsy, as others hold. On Dr. Brown's +showing, Bunyan's ancestors lost their lands in process of time and +change, and Bunyan's father was a tinker. He preferred to call +himself a brazier--his was the rather unexpected trade to which Mr. +Dick proposed apprenticing David Copperfield. + +Bunyan himself, "the wondrous babe," as Dr. Brown enthusiastically +styles him, was christened on November 30th, 1628. He was born in a +cottage, long fallen, and hard by was a marshy place, "a veritable +slough of despond." Bunyan may have had it in mind when he wrote of +the slough where Christian had so much trouble. He was not a +travelled man: all his knowledge of people and places he found at +his doors. He had some schooling, "according to the rate of other +poor men's children," and assuredly it was enough. + +The great civil war broke out, and Bunyan was a soldier; he tells us +not on which side. Dr. Brown and Mr. Lewis Morris think he was on +that of the Parliament, but his old father, the tinker, stood for +the King. Mr. Froude is rather more inclined to hold that he was +among the "gay gallants who struck for the crown." He does not seem +to have been much under fire, but he got that knowledge of the +appearance of war which he used in his siege of the City of Mansoul. +One can hardly think that Bunyan liked war--certainly not from +cowardice, but from goodness of heart. + +In 1646 the army was disbanded, and Bunyan went back to Elstow +village and his tinkering, his bell-ringing, his dancing with the +girls, his playing at "cat" on a Sunday after service. + +He married very young and poor. He married a pious wife, and read +all her library--"The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The +Practice of Piety." He became very devout in the spirit of the +Church of England, and he gave up his amusements. Then he fell into +the Slough of Despond, then he went through the Valley of the +Shadow, and battled with Apollyon. + +People have wondered WHY he fancied himself such a sinner? He +confesses to having been a liar and a blasphemer. If I may guess, I +fancy that this was merely the literary genius of Bunyan seeking for +expression. His lies, I would go bail, were tremendous romances, +wild fictions told for fun, never lies of cowardice or for gain. As +to his blasphemies, he had an extraordinary power of language, and +that was how he gave it play. "Fancy swearing" was his only +literary safety-valve, in those early days, when he played cat on +Elstow Green. + +Then he heard a voice dart from heaven into his soul, which said, +"Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go +to hell?" So he fell on repentance, and passed those awful years of +mental torture, when all nature seemed to tempt him to the Unknown +Sin. + +What did all this mean? It meant that Bunyan was within an ace of +madness. + +It happens to a certain proportion of men, religiously brought up, +to suffer like Bunyan. They hear voices, they are afraid of that +awful unknown iniquity, and of eternal death, as Bunyan and Cowper +were afraid. + +Was it not De Quincey who was at school with a bully who believed he +had been guilty of the unpardonable offence? Bullying is an offence +much less pardonable than most men are guilty of. Their best plan +(in Bunyan's misery) is to tell Apollyon that the Devil is an ass, +to do their work and speak the truth. + +Bunyan got quit of his terror at last, briefly by believing in the +goodness of God. He did not say, like Mr. Carlyle, "Well, if all my +fears are true, what then?" His was a Christian, not a stoical +deliverance. + +The "church" in which Bunyan found shelter had for minister a +converted major in a Royalist regiment. It was a quaint little +community, the members living like the early disciples, correcting +each other's faults, and keeping a severe eye on each other's lives. +Bunyan became a minister in it; but, Puritan as he was, he lets his +Pilgrims dance on joyful occasions, and even Mr. Ready-to-Halt +waltzes with a young lady of the Pilgrim company. + +As a minister and teacher Bunyan began to write books of controversy +with Quakers and clergymen. The points debated are no longer +important to us; the main thing was that he got a pen into his hand, +and found a proper outlet for his genius, a better way than fancy +swearing. + +If he had not been cast into Bedford jail for preaching in a +cottage, he might never have dreamed his immortal dream, nor become +all that he was. The leisures of gaol were long. In that "den" the +Muse came to him, the fair kind Muse of the Home Beautiful. He saw +all that company of his, so like and so unlike Chaucer's: Faithful, +and Hopeful, and Christian, the fellowship of fiends, the truculent +Cavaliers of Vanity Fair, and Giant Despair, with his grievous +crabtree cudgel; and other people he saw who are with us always,-- +the handsome Madam Bubble, and the young woman whose name was Dull, +and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Facing Bothways, and Byends, all +the persons of the comedy of human life. + +He hears the angelic songs of the City beyond the river; he hears +them, but repeat them to us he cannot, "for I'm no poet," as he says +himself. He beheld the country of Beulah, and the Delectable +Mountains, that earthly Paradise of nature where we might be happy +yet, and wander no farther, if the world would let us--fair +mountains in whose streams Izaak Walton was then even casting angle. + +It is pleasant to fancy how Walton and Bunyan might have met and +talked, under a plane tree by the Ouse, while the May showers were +falling. Surely Bunyan would not have likened the good old man to +Formalist; and certainly Walton would have enjoyed travelling with +Christian, though the book was by none of his dear bishops, but by a +Non-conformist. They were made to like but not to convert each +other; in matters ecclesiastical they saw the opposite sides of the +shield. Each wrote a masterpiece. It is too late to praise "The +Complete Angler" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." You may put ingenuity +on the rack, but she can say nothing new that is true about the best +romance that ever was wedded to allegory, nor about the best idyl of +old English life. + +The people are living now--all the people: the noisy bullying +judges, as of the French Revolutionary Courts, or the Hanging Courts +after Monmouth's war; the demure, grave Puritan girls; and Matthew, +who had the gripes; and lazy, feckless Ignorance, who came to so ill +an end, poor fellow; and sturdy Old Honest, and timid Mr. Fearing; +not single persons, but dozens, arise on the memory. + +They come, as fresh, as vivid, as if they were out of Scott or +Moliere; the Tinker is as great a master of character and fiction as +the greatest, almost; his style is pure, and plain, and sound, full +of old idioms, and even of something like old slang. But even his +slang is classical. + +Bunyan is everybody's author. The very Catholics have their own +edition of the Pilgrim: they have cut out Giant Pope, but have been +too good-natured to insert Giant Protestant in his place. +Unheralded, unannounced, though not uncriticised (they accused the +Tinker of being a plagiarist, of course), Bunyan outshone the Court +wits, the learned, the poets of the Restoration, and even the great +theologians. + +His other books, except "Grace Abounding" (an autobiography), "The +Holy War," and "Mr. Badman," are only known to students, nor much +read by them. The fashion of his theology, as of all theology, +passed away; it is by virtue of his imagination, of his romance, +that he lives. + +The allegory, of course, is full of flaws. It would not have been +manly of Christian to run off and save his own soul, leaving his +wife and family. But Bunyan shrank from showing us how difficult, +if not impossible, it is for a married man to be a saint. +Christiana was really with him all through that pilgrimage; and how +he must have been hampered by that woman of the world! But had the +allegory clung more closely to the skirts of truth, it would have +changed from a romance to a satire, from "The Pilgrim's Progress" to +"Vanity Fair." There was too much love in Bunyan for a satirist of +that kind; he had just enough for a humourist. + +Born in another class, he might have been, he would have been, a +writer more refined in his strength, more uniformly excellent, but +never so universal nor so popular in the best sense of the term. + +In the change of times and belief it is not impossible that Bunyan +will live among the class whom he least thought of addressing-- +scholars, lovers of worldly literature--for devotion and poverty are +parting company, while art endures till civilisation perishes. + +Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan believed, +no longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal's open beside our armchairs? +The question is only a form of that wide riddle, Does any +theological or philosophical opinion make us better or worse? The +vast majority of men and women are little affected by schemes and +theories of this life and the next. They who even ask for a reply +to the riddle are the few: most of us take the easy-going morality +of our world for a guide, as we take Bradshaw for a railway journey. +It is the few who must find out an answer: on that answer their +lives depend, and the lives of others are insensibly raised towards +their level. Bunyan would not have been a worse man if he had +shared the faith of Izaak Walton. Izaak had his reply to all +questions in the Church Catechism and the Articles. Bunyan found +his in the theology of his sect, appealing more strongly than +orthodoxy to a nature more bellicose than Izaak's. Men like him, +with his indomitable courage, will never lack a solution of the +puzzle of the earth. At worst they will live by law, whether they +dare to speak of it as God's law, or dare not. They will always be +our leaders, our Captain Greathearts, in the pilgrimage to the city +where, led or unled, we must all at last arrive. They will not fail +us, while loyalty and valour are human qualities. The day may +conceivably come when we have no Christian to march before us, but +we shall never lack the company of Greatheart. + + + +TO A YOUNG JOURNALIST + + + +Dear Smith, - + +You inform me that you desire to be a journalist, and you are kind +enough to ask my advice. Well, be a journalist, by all means, in +any honest and honourable branch of the profession. But do not be +an eavesdropper and a spy. You may fly into a passion when you +receive this very plainly worded advice. I hope you will; but, for +several reasons, which I now go on to state, I fear that you won't. +I fear that, either by natural gift or by acquired habit, you +already possess the imperturbable temper which will be so useful to +you if you do join the army of spies and eavesdroppers. If I am +right, you have made up your mind to refuse to take offence, as long +as by not taking offence you can wriggle yourself forward in the +band of journalistic reptiles. You will be revenged on me, in that +case, some day; you will lie in wait for me with a dirty bludgeon, +and steal on me out of a sewer. If you do, permit me to assure you +that I don't care. But if you are already in a rage, if you are +about tearing up this epistle, and are starting to assault me +personally, or at least to answer me furiously, then there is every +hope for you and for your future. I therefore venture to state my +reasons for supposing that you are inclined to begin a course which +your father, if he were alive, would deplore, as all honourable men +in their hearts must deplore it. When you were at the University +(let me congratulate you on your degree) you edited, or helped to +edit, The Bull-dog. It was not a very brilliant nor a very witty, +but it was an extremely "racy" periodical. It spoke of all men and +dons by their nicknames. It was full of second-hand slang. It +contained many personal anecdotes, to the detriment of many people. +It printed garbled and spiteful versions of private conversations on +private affairs. It did not even spare to make comments on ladies, +and on the details of domestic life in the town and in the +University. The copies which you sent me I glanced at with extreme +disgust. + +In my time, more than a score of years ago, a similar periodical, +but a much more clever periodical, was put forth by members of the +University. It contained a novel which, even now, would be worth +several ill-gotten guineas to the makers of the chronique +scandaleuse. But nobody bought it, and it died an early death. +Times have altered, I am a fogey; but the ideas of honour and +decency which fogies hold now were held by young men in the sixties +of our century. I know very well that these ideas are obsolete. I +am not preaching to the world, nor hoping to convert society, but to +YOU, and purely in your own private, spiritual interest. If you +enter on this path of tattle, mendacity, and malice, and if, with +your cleverness and light hand, you are successful, society will not +turn its back on you. You will be feared in many quarters, and +welcomed in others. Of your paragraphs people will say that "it is +a shame, of course, but it is very amusing." There are so many +shames in the world, shames not at all amusing, that you may see no +harm in adding to the number. "If I don't do it," you may argue, +"some one else will." Undoubtedly; but WHY SHOULD YOU DO IT? + +You are not a starving scribbler; if you determine to write, you can +write well, though not so easily, on many topics. You have not that +last sad excuse of hunger, which drives poor women to the streets, +and makes unhappy men act as public blabs and spies. If YOU take to +this metier, it must be because you like it, which means that you +enjoy being a listener to and reporter of talk that was never meant +for any ears except those in which it was uttered. It means that +the hospitable board is not sacred for YOU; it means that, with you, +friendship, honour, all that makes human life better than a low +smoking-room, are only valuable for what their betrayal will bring. +It means that not even the welfare of your country will prevent you +from running to the Press with any secret which you may have been +entrusted with, or which you may have surprised. It means, this +peculiar kind of profession, that all things open and excellent, and +conspicuous to all men, are with you of no account. Art, +literature, politics, are to cease to interest you. You are to +scheme to surprise gossip about the private lives, dress, and talk +of artists, men of letters, politicians. Your professional work +will sink below the level of servants' gossip in a public-house +parlour. If you happen to meet a man of known name, you will watch +him, will listen to him, will try to sneak into his confidence, and +you will blab, for money, about him, and your blab will inevitably +be mendacious. In short, like the most pitiable outcasts of +womankind, and, without their excuse, you will live by selling your +honour. You will not suffer much, nor suffer long. Your conscience +will very speedily be seared with a red-hot iron. You will be on +the road which leads from mere dishonour to crime; and you may find +yourself actually practising chantage, and extorting money as the +price of your silence. This is the lowest deep: the vast majority, +even of social mouchards, do not sink so low as this. + +The profession of the critic, even in honourable and open criticism, +is beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid saying an unkind +thing, a cruel thing, which is smart, and which may even be +deserved. Who can say that he has escaped this temptation, and what +man of heart can think of his own fall without a sense of shame? +There are, I admit, authors so antipathetic to me, that I cannot +trust myself to review them. Would that I had never reviewed them! +They cannot be so bad as they seem to me: they must have qualities +which escape my observation. Then there is the temptation to hit +back. Some one writes, unjustly or unkindly as you think, of you or +of your friends. You wait till your enemy has written a book, and +then you have your innings. It is not in nature that your review +should be fair: you must inevitably be more on the look-out for +faults than merits. The ereintage, the "smashing" of a literary foe +is very delightful at the moment, but it does not look well in the +light of reflection. But these deeds are mere peccadilloes compared +with the confirmed habit of regarding all men and women as fair game +for personal tattle and the sating of private spite. Nobody, +perhaps, begins with this intention. Most men and women can find +ready sophistries. If a report about any one reaches their ears, +they say that they are doing him a service by publishing it and +enabling him to contradict it. As if any mortal ever listened to a +contradiction! And there are charges--that of plagiarism, for +example--which can never be disproved, even if contradictions were +listened to by the public. The accusation goes everywhere, is +copied into every printed rag; the contradiction dies with the daily +death of a single newspaper. You may reply that a man of sense will +be indifferent to false accusations. He may, or may not be,--that +is not the question for you; the question for you is whether you +will circulate news that is false, probably, and spiteful, +certainly. + +In short, the whole affair regards yourself more than it regards the +world. Plenty of poison is sold: is it well for you to be one of +the merchants? Is it the business of an educated gentleman to live +by the trade of an eavesdropper and a blab? In the Memoirs of M. +Blowitz he tells you how he began his illustrious career by +procuring the publication of remarks which M. Thiers had made to +him. He then "went to see M. Thiers, not without some +apprehension." Is that the kind of emotion which you wish to be +habitual in your experience? Do you think it agreeable to become +shame-faced when you meet people who have conversed with you +frankly? Do you enjoy being a sneak, and feeling like a sneak? Do +you find blushing pleasant? Of course you will soon lose the power +of blushing; but is that an agreeable prospect? Depend on it, there +are discomforts in the progress to the brazen, in the journey to the +shameless. You may, if your tattle is political, become serviceable +to men engaged in great affairs. They may even ask you to their +houses, if that is your ambition. You may urge that they condone +your deeds, and are even art and part in them. But you must also be +aware that they call you, and think you, a reptile. You are not one +of those who will do the devil's work without the devil's wages; but +do you seriously think that the wages are worth the degradation? + +Many men think so, and are not in other respects bad men. They may +even be kindly and genial. Gentlemen they cannot be, nor men of +delicacy, nor men of honour. They have sold themselves and their +self-respect, some with ease (they are the least blamable), some +with a struggle. They have seen better things, and perhaps vainly +long to return to them. These are "St. Satan's Penitents," and +their remorse is vain: + + +Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta. + + +If you don't wish to be of this dismal company, there is only one +course open to you. Never write for publication one line of +personal tattle. Let all men's persons and private lives be as +sacred to you as your father's,--though there are tattlers who would +sell paragraphs about their own mothers if there were a market for +the ware. There is no half-way house on this road. Once begin to +print private conversation, and you are lost--lost, that is, to +delicacy and gradually, to many other things excellent and of good +report. The whole question for you is, Do you mind incurring this +damnation? If there is nothing in it which appals and revolts you, +if your conscience is satisfied with a few ready sophisms, or if you +don't care a pin for your conscience, fall to! + +Vous irez loin! You will prattle in print about men's private lives +their hidden motives, their waistcoats, their wives, their boots, +their businesses, their incomes. Most of your prattle will +inevitably be lies. But go on! nobody will kick you, I deeply +regret to say. You will earn money. You will be welcomed in +society. You will live and die content, and without remorse. I do +not suppose that any particular inferno will await you in the future +life. Whoever watches this world "with larger other eyes than ours" +will doubtless make allowance for you, as for us all. I am not +pretending to be a whit better than you; probably I am worse in many +ways, but not in your way. Putting it merely as a matter of taste, +I don't like the way. It makes me sick--that is all. It is a sin +which I can comfortably damn, as I am not inclined to it. You may +put it in that light; and I have no way of converting you, nor, if I +have not dissuaded you, of dissuading you, from continuing, on a +larger scale, your practices in The Bull-dog. + + + +MR. KIPLING'S STORIES + + + +The wind bloweth where it listeth. But the wind of literary +inspiration has rarely shaken the bungalows of India, as, in the +tales of the old Jesuit missionaries, the magical air shook the +frail "medicine tents," where Huron conjurors practised their +mysteries. With a world of romance and of character at their doors, +Englishmen in India have seen as if they saw it not. They have been +busy in governing, in making war, making peace, building bridges, +laying down roads, and writing official reports. Our literature +from that continent of our conquest has been sparse indeed, except +in the way of biographies, of histories, and of rather local and +unintelligible facetiae. Except the novels by the author of "Tara," +and Sir Henry Cunningham's brilliant sketches, such as "Dustypore," +and Sir Alfred Lyall's poems, we might almost say that India has +contributed nothing to our finer literature. That old haunt of +history, the wealth of character brought out in that confusion of +races, of religions, and the old and new, has been wealth untouched, +a treasure-house sealed: those pagoda trees have never been shaken. +At last there comes an Englishman with eyes, with a pen +extraordinarily deft, an observation marvellously rapid and keen; +and, by good luck, this Englishman has no official duties: he is +neither a soldier, nor a judge; he is merely a man of letters. He +has leisure to look around him, he has the power of making us see +what he sees; and, when we have lost India, when some new power is +ruling where we ruled, when our empire has followed that of the +Moguls, future generations will learn from Mr. Kipling's works what +India was under English sway. + +It is one of the surprises of literature that these tiny +masterpieces in prose and verse were poured, "as rich men give that +care not for their gifts," into the columns of Anglo-Indian +journals. There they were thought clever and ephemeral--part of the +chatter of the week. The subjects, no doubt, seemed so familiar, +that the strength of the handling, the brilliance of the colour, +were scarcely recognised. But Mr. Kipling's volumes no sooner +reached England than the people into whose hands they fell were +certain that here were the beginnings of a new literary force. The +books had the strangeness, the colour, the variety, the perfume of +the East. Thus it is no wonder that Mr. Kipling's repute grew up as +rapidly as the mysterious mango tree of the conjurors. There were +critics, of course, ready to say that the thing was merely a trick, +and had nothing of the supernatural. That opinion is not likely to +hold its ground. Perhaps the most severe of the critics has been a +young Scotch gentleman, writing French, and writing it wonderfully +well, in a Parisian review. He chose to regard Mr. Kipling as +little but an imitator of Bret Harte, deriving his popularity mainly +from the novel and exotic character of his subjects. No doubt, if +Mr. Kipling has a literary progenitor, it is Mr. Bret Harte. Among +his earlier verses a few are what an imitator of the American might +have written in India. But it is a wild judgment which traces Mr. +Kipling's success to his use, for example, of Anglo-Indian phrases +and scraps of native dialects. The presence of these elements is +among the causes which have made Englishmen think Anglo-Indian +literature tediously provincial, and India a bore. Mr. Kipling, on +the other hand, makes us regard the continent which was a bore an +enchanted land, full of marvels and magic which are real. There +has, indeed, arisen a taste for exotic literature: people have +become alive to the strangeness and fascination of the world beyond +the bounds of Europe and the United States. But that is only +because men of imagination and literary skill have been the new +conquerors--the Corteses and Balboas of India, Africa, Australia, +Japan, and the isles of the southern seas. All such conquerors, +whether they write with the polish of M. Pierre Loti, or with the +carelessness of Mr. Boldrewood, have, at least, seen new worlds for +themselves; have gone out of the streets of the over-populated lands +into the open air; have sailed and ridden, walked and hunted; have +escaped from the fog and smoke of towns. New strength has come from +fresher air into their brains and blood; hence the novelty and +buoyancy of the stories which they tell. Hence, too, they are +rather to be counted among romanticists than realists, however real +is the essential truth of their books. They have found so much to +see and to record, that they are not tempted to use the microscope, +and pore for ever on the minute in character. A great deal of +realism, especially in France, attracts because it is novel, because +M. Zola and others have also found new worlds to conquer. But +certain provinces in those worlds were not unknown to, but were +voluntarily neglected by, earlier explorers. They were the "Bad +Lands" of life and character: surely it is wiser to seek quite new +realms than to build mud huts and dunghills on the "Bad Lands." + +Mr. Kipling's work, like all good work, is both real and romantic. +It is real because he sees and feels very swiftly and keenly; it is +romantic, again, because he has a sharp eye for the reality of +romance, for the attraction and possibility of adventure, and +because he is young. If a reader wants to see petty characters +displayed in all their meannesses, if this be realism, surely +certain of Mr. Kipling's painted and frisky matrons are realistic +enough. The seamy side of Anglo-Indian life: the intrigues, +amorous or semi-political--the slang of people who describe dining +as "mangling garbage" the "games of tennis with the seventh +commandment"--he has not neglected any of these. Probably the +sketches are true enough, and pity 'tis true: for example, the +sketches in "Under the Deodars" and in "The Gadsbys." That worthy +pair, with their friends, are to myself as unsympathetic, almost, as +the characters in "La Conquete de Plassans." But Mr. Kipling is too +much a true realist to make their selfishness and pettiness +unbroken, unceasing. We know that "Gaddy" is a brave, modest, and +hard-working soldier; and, when his little silly bride (who prefers +being kissed by a man with waxed moustaches) lies near to death, +certainly I am nearer to tears than when I am obliged to attend the +bed of Little Dombey or of Little Nell. Probably there is a great +deal of slangy and unrefined Anglo-Indian society; and, no doubt, to +sketch it in its true colours is not beyond the province of art. At +worst it is redeemed, in part, by its constancy in the presence of +various perils--from disease, and from "the bullet flying down the +pass." Mr. Kipling may not be, and very probably is not, a reader +of "Gyp"; but "The Gadsbys," especially, reads like the work of an +Anglo-Indian disciple, trammelled by certain English conventions. +The more Pharisaic realists--those of the strictest sect--would +probably welcome Mr. Kipling as a younger brother, so far as "Under +the Deodars" and "The Gadsbys" are concerned, if he were not +occasionally witty and even flippant, as well as realistic. But, +very fortunately, he has not confined his observation to the +leisures and pleasures of Simla; he has looked out also on war and +on sport, on the life of all native tribes and castes; and has even +glanced across the borders of "The Undiscovered Country." + +Among Mr. Kipling's discoveries of new kinds of characters, probably +the most popular is his invention of the British soldier in India. +He avers that he "loves that very strong man, Thomas Atkins"; but +his affection has not blinded him to the faults of the beloved. Mr. +Atkins drinks too much, is too careless a gallant in love, has been +educated either too much or too little, and has other faults, partly +due, apparently, to recent military organisation, partly to the +feverish and unsettled state of the civilised world. But he is +still brave, when he is well led; still loyal, above all, to his +"trusty chum." Every Englishman must hope that, if Terence Mulvaney +did not take the city of Lungtung Pen as described, yet he is ready, +and willing so to take it. Mr. Mulvaney is as humorous as Micky +Free, but more melancholy and more truculent. He has, perhaps, "won +his way to the mythical" already, and is not so much a soldier, as +an incarnation, not of Krishna, but of many soldierly qualities. On +the other hand, Private Ortheris, especially in his frenzy, seems to +shew all the truth, and much more than the life of, a photograph. +Such, we presume, is the soldier, and such are his experiences and +temptations and repentance. But nobody ever dreamed of telling us +all this, till Mr. Kipling came. As for the soldier in action, the +"Taking of Lungtung Pen," and the "Drums of the Fore and Aft," and +that other tale of the battle with the Pathans in the gorge, are +among the good fights of fiction. They stir the spirit, and they +should be distributed (in addition, of course, to the "Soldier's +Pocket Book") in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling is as +well informed about the soldier's women-kind as about the soldier: +about Dinah Shadd as about Terence Mulvaney. Lever never instructed +us on these matters: Micky Free, if he loves, rides away; but +Terence Mulvaney is true to his old woman. Gallant, loyal, +reckless, vain, swaggering, and tender-hearted, Terence Mulvaney, if +there were enough of him, "would take St. Petersburg in his +drawers." Can we be too grateful to an author who has extended, as +Mr. Kipling in his military sketches has extended, the frontiers of +our knowledge and sympathy? + +It is a mere question of individual taste; but, for my own part, had +I to make a small selection from Mr. Kipling's tales, I would +include more of his studies in Black than in White, and many of his +excursions beyond the probable and natural. It is difficult to have +one special favourite in this kind; but perhaps the story of the two +English adventurers among the freemasons of unknown Kafiristan (in +the "Phantom Rickshaw") would take a very high place. The gas- +heated air of the Indian newspaper office is so real, and into it +comes a wanderer who has seen new faces of death, and who carries +with him a head that has worn a royal crown. The contrasts are of +brutal force; the legend is among the best of such strange fancies. +Then there is, in the same volume, "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie +Jukes," the most dreadful nightmare of the most awful Bunker in the +realms of fancy. This is a very early work; if nothing else of Mr. +Kipling's existed, his memory might live by it, as does the memory +of the American Irishman by the "Diamond Lens." The sham magic of +"In the House of Suddhu" is as terrible as true necromancy could be, +and I have a faiblesse for the "Bisara of Pooree." "The Gate of the +Hundred Sorrows" is a realistic version of "The English Opium +Eater," and more powerful by dint of less rhetoric. As for the +sketches of native life--for example, "On the City Wall"--to English +readers they are no less than revelations. They testify, more even +than the military stories, to the author's swift and certain vision, +his certainty in his effects. In brief, Mr. Kipling has conquered +worlds, of which, as it were, we knew not the existence. + +His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they +hardly need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers +who are blind to his merits. There is a false air of hardness +(quite in contradiction to the sentiment in his tales of childish +life); there is a knowing air; there are mannerisms, such as "But +that is another story"; there is a display of slang; there is the +too obtrusive knocking of the nail on the head. Everybody can mark +these errors; a few cannot overcome their antipathy, and so lose a +great deal of pleasure. + +It is impossible to guess how Mr. Kipling will fare if he ventures +on one of the usual novels, of the orthodox length. Few men have +succeeded both in the conte and the novel. Mr. Bret Harte is +limited to the conte; M. Guy de Maupassant is probably at his best +in it. Scott wrote but three or four short tales, and only one of +these is a masterpiece. Poe never attempted a novel. Hawthorne is +almost alone in his command of both kinds. We can live only in the +hope that Mr. Kipling, so skilled in so many species of the conte, +so vigorous in so many kinds of verse, will also be triumphant in +the novel: though it seems unlikely that its scene can be in +England, and though it is certain that a writer who so cuts to the +quick will not be happy with the novel's almost inevitable +"padding." Mr. Kipling's longest effort, "The Light which Failed," +can, perhaps, hardly be considered a test or touchstone of his +powers as a novelist. The central interest is not powerful enough; +the characters are not so sympathetic, as are the interest and the +characters of his short pieces. Many of these persons we have met +so often that they are not mere passing acquaintances, but already +find in us the loyalty due to old friends. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} The subject has been much more gravely treated in Mr. Robert +Bridges's "Achilles in Scyros." + +{2} Conjecture may cease, as Mr. Morris has translated the Odyssey. + +{3} For Helen Pendennis, see the "Letters," p. 97. + +{4} Mr. Henley has lately, as a loyal Dickensite, been defending +the plots of Dickens, and his tragedy. Pro captu lectoris; if the +reader likes them, then they are good for the reader: "good +absolute, not for me though," perhaps. The plot of "Martin +Chuzzlewit" may be good, but the conduct of old Martin would strike +me as improbable if I met it in the "Arabian Nights." That the +creator of Pecksniff should have taken his misdeeds seriously, as if +Mr. Pecksniff had been a Tartuffe, not a delight, seems curious. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang + diff --git a/old/esltt10.zip b/old/esltt10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2497ea8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/esltt10.zip |